The Official Rackspace Blog » Samantha Swaim

How Does Your Business Buy Technology? Let Your Voice Be Heard.

Samantha Swaim — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 19:43:26 +0000

Business and technology go hand-in-hand and as every business has specific needs it is crucial that vendors and their customers are always in sync. We’re working with Smallbiztechnology.com on a short online survey on how businesses use and buy technology. In a simple twelve-question survey your voice will be heard on the technology buying needs of your business and how you can best be served. Each participant will receive the full Technology Buying Insights Report for further review.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with them, Smallbiztechnology.com is a media company whose goal is to educate growing businesses with information on how to strategically use technology as a tool to grow their businesses. The site provides small business owners with news, articles, discussion boards, resources, analysis, and notifications for upcoming events.

We encourage you to take five minutes and participate in this survey. We’re looking forward to your feedback! To take the survey please go here, http://bit.ly/eNHiAb

RackConnect and Critical Sites Advance Enterprise Services

Samantha Swaim — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 22:36:39 +0000

The recent product launches of RackConnect and Critical Sites has strengthened Rackspace’s Cloud hosting capabilities and provided more support to the Enterprise market. RackConnect offers customers a flawless integration of the Rackspace Cloud and dedicated hosting. The new Critical Sites service level provides advanced monitoring for customers who rely on their websites and applications as mission critical to their business.

“Businesses of all sizes and budgets now have access to Enterprise-class infrastructure, backed by our industry-leading Fanatical Support,” said John Engates, chief technology officer for Rackspace. “The recent additions to our portfolio, including RackConnect and Critical Sites, make logical business sense for those looking for best-in-class hosted solutions as alternatives to expensive and inefficient on-premise IT infrastructure.”

RackConnect allows customers to combine the scalability and cost benefits of the Rackspace Cloud with the added security of dedicated managed hosting. As an extension of Fanatical Support, RackConnect customers will interact with a single account team.

Critical Sites is specifically designed for customers who are dependent on their online presence to run their business effectively. The new service level offers the technical expertise and enterprise tools to help maximize infrastructure performance, proactively identify issues before they affect the end user experience and quickly address any problems that do occur.

To read the official Rackspace press release with additional feedback from customer, Major League Gaming, please click here.

IT Business Edge Names Rackspace Best Midmarket Strategy Winner in Their 2010 Midmarket CIO Forum Awards

Samantha Swaim — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 16:40:05 +0000

Tech publisher IT Business Edge today announced the winners for their 2010 Midmarket CIO Forum Awards, recognizing Rackspace Hosting as Best Midmarket Strategy. The winners were voted on by senior IT executives after they had previewed individual technologies at IT Business Edge’s conference in Orlando. Based on the results tallied, Rackspace and TriGeo were recognized as the recipients for this conference.

“Winning IT Business Edge’s Best Mid-Market Strategy Award is an honor and true validation of the incredible work being accomplished within Rackspace’s walls,” said Jim Lewandowski. “With the innovations being made in cloud computing as well as our continued commitment to world class service outcomes, it’s a very exciting time to be a Racker.”

Rackspace spoke about Fanatical Support, our Hybrid Portfolio and OpenStack at the conference impressing participants. As a result of the strong presentations, Rackspace was recognized for having the most innovative and aggressive approach towards targeting midmarket organizations through product development, innovation and marketing techniques.

“Unlike other awards, our voters are pre-qualified IT decision makers who have interacted with all our nominees, face-to-face, for two days,” said Phil Branon, president of IT Business Edge. “Two winners are chosen at the event from among some of the most impressive Midmarket technology providers in the industry. This honor is hard-won and truly deserved.”

To read the official press release from IT Business Edge click here.

Lanham Napier, CEO of Rackspace, Named One of the Top 100 Most Influential Executives by Everything Channel’s CRN

Samantha Swaim — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 19:40:23 +0000

Today, Rackspace announced that Lanham Napier, president and chief executive officer, was named one of the Top 100 Most Influential Executives in the Industry by Everything Channel’s CRN.

Since arriving at Rackspace, Napier has been largely credited by Rackspace’s management team with keeping the company steady and setting it on its current path to profitability and success. His work with the executive team has grown the company, and has made Rackspace a strong competitor in the hosting and cloud computing industry. Under Napier’s leadership, Rackspace has successfully launched channel programs for the company’s managed hosting, cloud computing and email hosting businesses.

“Receiving this recognition from Everything Channel’s CRN as one of the most influential individuals is truly an honor,” said Lanham Napier, president and CEO of Rackspace. “At Rackspace we strive to be a good collaborator for our channel partners, helping to educate them about new technologies like hybrid hosting and helping them to reach new markets. We are fully committed to delivering the best and broadest portfolio available to our channel partners.”

To read the official press release please go to the Rackspace Newsroom

Bruce Knooihuizen Receives ‘Best CFO’ Award From the San Antonio Business Journal

Samantha Swaim — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 17:42:33 +0000

Bruce Knooihuizen, chief financial officer of Rackspace Hosting, was recently distinguished as one of 2010 Best CFOs by the San Antonio Business Journal. Knooihuizen, along with 14 other outstanding CFOs from the San Antonio area, were featured in the Journal’s 2010 Best CFO Awards section that ran in October 8th issue. The honorees were also recognized at a luncheon on November 9th at Oak Hills Country Club.
The professionals were recruited from the Business Journal’s ads, Website, and partners. Most nominations came from and were supported by their employees. The Business Journal then selected the winners in different categories, from largest public company or nonprofit. Knooihuizen won in the public company category.
According to the special section, Knooihuizen, with the help of Rackers (Rackspace employees), has been able to lead Rackspace through the economic downturn. “We’ve made great progress during a rough time because we have good people who understand the challenges,” Knooihuizen said. “We value the people we’ve hired, and good communication with our employees has helped us avoid a lot of difficulties.”
Knooihuizen joined Rackspace in 2008 as the CFO, SVP and Treasurer. In his role he is responsible for the company’s fiscal function and performance, treasury management, capital structure, investor relations and supply chain management.

OpenStack Announces Next Two Cloud Platform Releases at First Public Design Summit

Samantha Swaim — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 21:21:51 +0000

OpenStack completed its first public Design Summit last week, November 9-12, at the Weston Centre in San Antonio. The event attracted more than 250 people from 90 companies and 14 countries to plan the next two releases, code-named ‘Bexar’ and ‘Cactus’. The four-day event was hosted by Rackspace® Hosting, a founding member of the open source project.

The OpenStack Design Summit featured two separate tracks, one consisting of developer-led sessions to plan the next two code releases, and one for interested users and the partner ecosystem to discuss deployment and commercial opportunities. The Summit also featured an ‘InstallFest,’ where attendees were able to test and document the installation process on a live, on-site environment provided by Dell and powered by the company’s PowerEdge C server line.

“From development, to documentation and deployment, last week’s OpenStack Design Summit enabled the OpenStack community to come together to learn and make the key decisions for the next two code releases,” said Jim Curry, chief stacker and general manager, OpenStack.

To read more about the OpenStack Design Summit and see who keynote speakers and award recipients were, click here. Also, see the video below for a recap of the Design Summit.

Rackspace Supports Thanksgiving 365

Samantha Swaim — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 22:34:43 +0000

Happy November Rackers! Now that we are approaching Thanksgiving it is time to think about what we are grateful for and how we can help others in the San Antonio Community. Inner City Development’s Thanksgiving 365 program was created to do just that. The program raises money to stock their emergency food pantry for families in crisis, 365 days a year. Annually, they serve an average of 145,000 meals per year and an average of 220 households per month.

Inner City Development is hoping to raise $30,000 to help feed those in need throughout the year. To reach this goal they are asking volunteers to fast in the lead up to Thanksgiving. Each person taking part in this program is committing to raise $1,000 during November 3rd – 17th. Once they raise the $1,000 they stop fasting, how long it takes depends on how generously people give!

Four of our own, Ryan Haug, Larry “Sugarbear” Reyes, Casey Casseb, and Meg Breslin will begin their fast tomorrow and need our help to reach their goal, preferably ASAP! You can donate any amount, by writing a check and delivering it personally to the faster, write a check with the faster’s name and send directly to Inner City Development, or donate through this PayPal account. Also, if you would like to participate in the fast E-mail Ryan Haug and he will help you get signed up!

Remember, hunger is not a Thanksgiving issue: it is an issue 365 days a year.

Below you will find the address to Inner City Development and an interview with Ryan describing the program!

Inner City Development

1300 Chihuahua St, San Antonio, Texas 78207

http://innercitydevelopment.org/news/

Interview with Ryan:

Rackspace makes InformationWeek 500 List of Top Technology Innovators Across America

Samantha Swaim — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 21:21:16 +0000

Today, InformationWeek announced that Rackspace Hosting earned the number 225 on this year’s InformationWeek 500; an annual listing of America’s most innovative users of business technology. Rackspace was awarded its debut spot on the list for its Opportunity 2 Online (O2O) project, an internal business process optimization initiative to help minimize order errors, decrease cycle time and improve customer satisfaction, thus enhancing our hallmark Fanatical Support.
Making the top 250 list, Rackspace was among leading companies such as Hewlett-Packard Co., Dell Inc., and Microsoft Corp.
In response to this great accomplishment, Steve Mills, CIO of Rackspace Hosting, said, “Our dedication to providing Fanatical Support drives our business, and to deliver on that commitment we have taken a big step to improve out efficiency in processing customer requests.” “We’re honored to have our accomplishment recognized by InformationWeek.”
For more information about Rackspace’s debut on the list see InformationWeek.

Rackspace Customer, Tech Guru, Chooses Fanatical Support

Samantha Swaim — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 21:16:44 +0000

When choosing a company to host their E-mail, Tech Guru, a leading IT consulting company, chose to go with Rackspace for their Fanatical Support.“We were really impressed (with Rackspace),” said Micah Thor, VP of Operations, “We didn’t know this type of service existed.”

Dan Moshe, President and Founder of the Minneapolis based company shared Thor’s thoughts. “The fact is anybody and their brother can go ahead and set up an exchange server and resell it,” he said. “The fact that Rackspace is committed to providing their Fanatical Support was a differentiator in our eyes when we were looking for a provider.”

To hear more on Tech Guru’s experience with Rackspace click here!

Fanatical Support Wows TDD Enterprises

Samantha Swaim — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 16:52:42 +0000

TTD Enterprises, located in Chicago, has been employing and supporting Microsoft Dynamics GP ERP for companies across the country since 1994. CEO, Ed Cowen, recently sat down to praise Rackspace for the support they have given him in the E-mail and Apps area.
“Rackspace E-mail and Apps has changed my business because I no longer have to worry about where my information is,” said Cowen, “It’s my assistant and it takes care of me.”

Click here to listen to what else Ed had to say about why he chooses Rackspace!