We also offer insight into how to take advantage of horizontal scaling in the cloud. By integrating your app with the open cloud API, it can now control the hosting infrastructure to spin up and down servers as needed. And since our cloud is open, you never have to worry about your app getting locked in.

Up your game with Rackspace – we got your back.

This powerful new feature makes it easier to deploy applications with greater flexibility. You can add or remove interfaces from your servers at any time without having to tinker with the server or worrying about getting the networking right the first time.

At this time, you can use either the python-novaclient or the Rackspace API for attaching/detaching a network to/from an operational Cloud Server. We are working to support this operation using the Rackspace Control Panel at this time and hope to offer this capability shortly.

In order to use this feature using the python-novaclient, you first have to install the Cloud Networks virtual interface extension as specified in the below URL:
http://docs.rackspace.com/servers/api/v2/cn-gettingstarted/content/section_gs_install_vir_interface.html

The API operations to attach and detach interfaces are listed here:
http://docs.rackspace.com/servers/api/v2/cn-devguide/content/api_virt_interfaces.html

We would like to hear more about other networking features you’d like to see. We look forward to helping you deploy the next generation of applications on the Rackspace open cloud!

Millions of businesses have already made the decision to outsource this non-revenue generating, time- and capital-intensive application. For most, making the decision is a no-brainer. Not having to deal with servers, software, spam/virus threats and storage creates more time to do the innovative IT projects that move the needle. However, the larger and more deeply entwined email is in your business, the more complicated the decision to outsource becomes. You must determine the optimal type of hosting, product feature set and best-fit provider.

Making the wrong choice can be disastrous. Only business-grade email offers the security and feature set to meet the demands of business users. Free and consumer-level email can expose your communications and customer data to prying eyes or email-borne threats. Not taking the time to thoroughly evaluate email providers can also leave you with a service full of restrictions that inhibit your ability to conduct business. For example, support for attachment sizes is too small, making it impossible to easily send large contracts or graphics files; or insufficient inbox storage that needs constant maintenance to avoid filling up.

After 13 years of offering business-grade email hosting and helping millions of customers navigate business email choices, we’ve compiled a guide to address the most common variables involved in the business email choice.

The Business Email 101 Guide is broken into eight steps covering:

• Deciding between hosted and in house, with TCO comparisons
• Choosing between free and business-grade email
• Defining requirements
• Choosing an email hosting provider
• Exploring email hosted on dedicated hardware
• Evaluating an email providers’ offerings
• Comparing provider options with a downloadable worksheet
• Planning your migration path

Read only the chapters that apply to your stage in the email decision path, or read from front to back if you’re approaching the decision for the first time.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll take an in-depth look at each step. If you have any questions or are looking for clarification on concepts presented in the guide, add a comment below and we’ll address it in a future post.

Last week, our fight took a big step forward, as a gathering to highlight the patent troll problem and plot a path to legislation swelled into a standing-room only affair. The “big tent” meeting, hosted by the Coalition for Patent Fairness, drew a large, diverse crowd of influential industry representatives. Look at this amazing list of who showed up to listen, learn and weigh in:

• American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A)
• National Association of Broadcasters (NAB)
• Food Marketing Institute (FMI)
• National Grocers Association (NGA)
• American Hospital Association (AHA)
• Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA)
• National Retail Federation (NRF)
• National Restaurant Association (NRA)
• Financial Services Roundtable (FSR)
• The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA)
• American Bankers Association (ABA)
• Newspaper Association of America (NAA)
• Entertainment Software Association (ESA)
• Engine Advocacy
• Public Knowledge
• Internet Association
• Internet Infrastructure Coalition
• Business Software Alliance
• Consumer Electronics Association
• Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA)
• Information Technology Industry Council (ITI)
• Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA)

Importantly, as you can see, many of these groups represent independent small businesses, the type of companies we hold near and dear as they make up a significant portion of our customer base.

These organizations – large and small – are fed up. They’re sick and tired of patent assertion entities (PAEs), more commonly known as patent trolls, and their often baseless but costly attacks. In a blog post on Patent Progress, Josh Lamel, Executive Director at The Foundation for Innovation and Internet Freedom, likened the energy at the big tent meeting to the iconic scene from “Network,” where Howard Beale (Peter Finch) persuades viewers to scream out “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

There have been encouraging developments recently, with President Obama addressing the issue live in a Google+ hangout and New York Senator Charles Schumer unveiling plans to strengthen the America Invents Act to improve patent quality and reduce meritless litigation. But more is needed. No one silver bullet will solve the problem, so industry leaders are contributing ideas to concerned members of Congress.

We expect the Coalition for Patent Fairness, our host of the big tent meeting, to contribute and help pass a list of excellent and fair proposals designed to work together to knock out the most egregious abuses of the patent system. The Internet Association will also weigh in with strong and thoughtful legislative proposals.

The Internet Infrastructure Coalition is taking up the flag of end user rights. Patent trolls sue small business end users as “soft targets,” because it is not cost effective for these defendants to hire lawyers. Protecting end users from suit will limit the options for PAEs, forcing them to pursue the manufacturers or providers of common products or services, rather than their customers.

Combining our efforts in this war on trolls will have the maximum impact. There is true power in numbers, and the diverse group of people who have joined the fight is a clear indication that banding together can make change happen.

For more guidance and for a high-level overview of the steps involved in planning the site experience you want to deliver, read The Ecommerce Customer Experience.

Recently, I sat down with the founders of drchrono, an app that streamlines the patient-caregiver experience. From electronic health records to medical billing and patient profiles, drchrono provides heath professionals and patients an all-in-one solution that makes it this week’s Must Have App.

Healthcare In The Cloud

drchrono is a dynamic medical company that provides a core EHR platform, scheduling, patient reminders and a billing system that every practice needs. Founded in 2009 by Daniel Kivatinos and Michael Nusimow, drchrono is now used by more than 40,000 physicians and that number is growing daily. In 2011, drchrono officially launched out of Y-Combinator, a San Francisco-based accelerator. Since the app is ONC-ATCB Stage 1 certified, physicians who use drchrono over traditional filing methods can qualify for up to $44,000 in government incentives. It’s a free app for both patients and caregivers and  eliminates the mounds of paperwork and time needed to manage healthcare files, which makes it a win-win for everyone, all thanks to cloud technology.

“Our end goal is to remove paper from the doctor-patient relationship, and this is another step in that direction,” said drchrono COO and Co-Founder Kivatinos.

drchrono offers three specific tools, iPad EHR, medical billing and OnPatient, none of which would exist without the cloud. IT hardware is expensive and cumbersome for smaller practices to maintain and by using an EHR built specifically for the iPad offers unrivaled speed and performance.

Physicians can signup for free online or through the App Store to use the drchrono platform. Physicians can then use the mobile app in the exam room to record notes, view patient history and submit lab requests and e-prescriptions. The web-based version of the app is used by front office staff for practice management tasks, including appointment scheduling and medical billing. Then, the accompanying OnPatient PHR (personal health records) app gives patients mobile access to their own health records. drchrono handles the full cycle of heath information management.

drchrono was created by a team of expert designers and developers with healthcare providers in mind. For example, the EHR includes templates for clinical forms and customization tools to help automate workflows. Drawing tools, prescription requests, referrals, photos and more make it a true one-stop for healthcare professionals. Plus, the EHR also features an accurate medical speech-to-text  service using M*Modal™ – just tap and speak, and the text appears. It learns from your voice so it only gets better with use.

Technology Behind The App

drchrono’s native iOS apps are available in the iTunes app store and are built on the Rackspace Cloud.

“We use the Rackspace Load Balancer and Rackspace Cloud Files to support drchrono,” said Co-Founder Nusimow. “Our server stack is Django/Python and we also rely on HTML5 and Javascript for drchrono.com, which is a rich SaaS platform for the doctors and their staff.”

Physicians can signup for a free account online or can download the app directly to their iPad from the iTunes store. On the flip side, patients can sign up at https://www.onpatient.com/  or download the patient-specific app directly to their iPhone.

To learn more about drchrono, take a look at its demo below. Be sure to visit https://drchrono.com/or ask your healthcare provider about EHR the next time you visit.

Let’s help bring the health industry to the forefront of cloud computing.

Check back each week as we highlight a new Must Have App. If you missed last week, take a look at our previous Must Have App: Good.Co.

If you’re a startup running on Rackspace and would like to be part of this series, let us know and we’ll set up a time to talk and learn more about your awesome app.

To keep Apple growing, Woz and Co-Founder Steve Jobs found angel investor Mike Markkula, who was willing to make the investment, under one condition: Woz leave HP and focus on Apple fulltime.

After some resistance, Woz relented, realizing he could be an engineer, not a businessman with Apple. It was then that Apple was truly born. And while not every startup will be Apple, Woz says it’s important to go all in with an idea. You have to want to succeed. You have to have a reason. Personal motivation, he says, can carry a budding business further than stock or salary.

“You’ve got to really, really want to make it go, so much that you’re living and breathing it 20 hours a day; even in your dreams,” Woz says.

Here, Woz talks about Apple’s humble beginnings and offers advice to startups:

Check out the previous installments of Rackspace On Startups featuring Rackspace Startup Liaison Officer Robert Scoble, author and speaker Guy Kawasaki, Rackspace President Lew Moorman, Springboard founder Sean Kane and Rackspace Chairman and Co-Founder Graham Weston.

Some of our DevOps Rackers have created Five Pillars of Cloudiness to make sure that you know how to code your application to take advantage of all the benefits of the open cloud. To help you monitor your infrastructure, we offer Cloud Monitoring, a tool that helps you setup a variety of monitoring checks that can notify you in an instant if your app goes down.

Don’t let downtime ruffle your feathers – we’ve got your back.

Recently, I moderated a webinar with the team behind the new Cloud Control Panel, and we have the full recording available for you to watch. During the webinar, you’ll learn how we designed the new Cloud Control Panel to give customers a better experience; we’ll walk through using the New Cloud Control Panel; we’ll all geek out on new speeds and feeds; and we’ll tell you what’s in store for the future. You’ll learn fun facts about the Cloud Control Panel and its team members, and be sure to stick around for the last 20 or so minutes for the Q&A – we had approximately 50 questions asked and we go through almost all of them!

Tune in and hear Brian Harstock, Product Manager, Cloud Control Panel; Jacob Puckett, Manager, User Experience Design; and Erik Carlin, Director, Product Strategy; and Jim Battenberg, Cloud and Partner Evangelist dig deeper into our new Cloud Control Panel:

We had a full house of 30 or so Appium hackers ranging from the Appium-curious to those who have Appium code imprinted in their cerebral cortex. And participants were not limited to the just Bay Area — we had a couple folks get in on the action from remote locations via a G+ hangout, something we hope to encourage in the future. There was even a real, live, bona fide Appium robot in the house, courtesy of Dan Cuellar from Zoosk.com – one of the Tapster robots that holds a pen and controls a physical mobile device via Appium.

Hackathons are one way we at Rackspace encourage and promote a strong open-source community as well as strong testing practices for the software development world.  Appium was built to make it easy to test any native mobile application in the same way the Selenium allows us to test web browsers.  We hope that by employing the Webdriver API from the start and not requiring any extra compilation for testing, Appium will help unite the testing community around mobile testing in a way that does not currently exist.

One sign that it was a successful event was that everyone who attended learned or achieved something.  Testers who needed a leg up installing Appium successfully saw their application automated.  On the other end of the spectrum, we had some lively discussion around Fruitstrap and iDeviceInstaller for automated installs of mobile apps to mobile devices, as well as some prodding and probing of the Instruments binary for possible parallel execution of tests.

As organizers and co-hosts of the event, we gained a new appreciation for the interest surrounding Appium.  “It’s really exciting to see so much enthusiasm,” said lead Appium developer Jonathan Lipps, “we really believe that this tool will make a difference, and it’s encouraging to see that others think so too.”

With the response that we received from this first hackathon, we plan to hold another.  If you want to join us next time, here are some ways to hear about the event:

• Join the Discussion List
• Join the IRC channel #appium on irc.freenode.net
• Watch this very blog
• Visit the official Sauce Labs blog
• Visit the official Appium blog
• Check out Rackspace’s Twitter stream

Regardless of where you are or what your interest level is in Appium, we welcome everyone to join in the fun.