Running a startup is hard. Especially, when there are only two people. When we first started building Work for Pie, we knew we needed solid, existing solutions to some of the basic problems that arise when building a software as a service (SaaS) platform. One particular problem that we faced was how to handle file storage.

Work for Pie is a web service that allows companies to build rich single-page profiles that tell a story: What is it like for a developer to work here. Likewise, developers can build their own profile/portfolio that aggregates content from various other services, such as Github, Stack Overflow and LinkedIn. The overall goal of the site is simple: Let Great Developers Find Great Companies.

There’s really no magic under the hood, and we use a fairly simple and common set of technologies. We’re a Django shop, and our production stack includes nginx, Redis, memcache and PostgreSQL. This stack runs well on Rackspace’s Cloud Servers, but we knew early on that we’d have customer-uploaded images, and that we wanted a scalable, robust solution for storing and serving that media.

That’s where Cloud Files first caught our attention. It’s a scalable solution for file storage, but it’s also backed by an industry-leading Content Delivery Network (Akamai’s CDN), which means our content loads quickly, and our site’s visitors have a much better experience. Cloud Files also supports content delivery over SSL. Since we decided to serve all content over SSL, that’s an important feature for us, and our visitors don’t get confused with those pesky unsecured content warnings!

Cloud Files offers a great solution for file storage and content delivery with features that we need, but the benefits for us don’t stop there. Frankly, one of the real selling points was the API (application programming interface), and python-cloudfiles — an open source python wrapper for that API. This allows us to programmatically interact with the service. For example, we automatically perform nightly database backups, and then our backup script can store those in a private Cloud Files container.

Another open source application, django-cumulus, seamlessly allows us to use Cloud Files as the default file storage option in Django. This means that we don’t have to do anything different while building our application in order to store our customer’s content in Cloud Files. We simply write our application as if we were storing files on the local filesystem. In fact, an early version of our site did just that, and part of our decision to use Cloud Files in the first place was due to the ease with which we could use Cloud Files with a very minimal change to our existing codebase.

In conclusion, Cloud Files has been a great asset to our company. It is a great service, and when paired with some great open source tools, it has allowed us to build our product more quickly and reliably than we could have done otherwise.

Learn more about Work For Pie and how it uses Rackspace Cloud Files in the case study “Cloud Files Powers Next-Gen Job Searches” in the Rackspace Knowledge Center.

Oil field logistics software is taking on the challenge of modernizing one of the oldest industries in the world: the trucking and transport industry. With a goal to provide precise and accurate logistics awareness through advanced fleet and freight management software, strides are quickly being made to provide real-time insight into the business of moving commodities from one place to another. Applications provide customers a one-stop shop for virtually all logistic needs. The process is cost-effectively made possible by using Windows 7 computers in the office and smartphones in-the-cab, connected via the Rackspace Cloud.

Our Rackspace-powered fleet logistics software applications provide the following abilities for the various hauling industries, whether they’re hauling crude oil, numerous types of water or frac sand, hazmat, gravel, timber or other commodities.

• Electronic Dispatching: The application lets dispatchers electronically dispatch truck drivers to jobs. Using proprietary smartphone applications, drivers can be dispatched to jobs with custom shippers, receivers and specific load types while even determining the party to be billed for the job. Dispatchers are enabled to queue up more than one job, so jobs are more efficiently routed and communicated to drivers, and hours of service (HOS) can be indicated to both dispatcher and driver to insure proper compliance by drivers.

• Mobile Communications: Using smartphone-powered devices, dispatchers can safely and cost-effectively send jobs, load details and messages to drivers while they’re on the road.

• Vehicle Tracking / Asset Locating: Using integrated vehicle tracking and non-powered asset tracking, trucking companies and equipment lessors can know where their equipment is located, how jobs are progressing, track driver routes and move equipment such as frac tanks cost-effectively and in real time to maximize production. Equipment owners can now know where their equipment is located and understand how to best utilize those assets.

• Electronic Reporting: Utilizing the data stored on the Rackspace Cloud, cutting edge logistics applications can provide a wide variety of reports that offer visibility for accounting to keep track of job tickets, load types and total load amounts. Various departments within a company have different information requirements. These can all be met through the use of integrated data from a range of data inputs. The result is that real-time awareness is provided to management, invoicing is correct, drivers are paid properly and both the operational and financial sides of the business are optimized.

• Oil Well DataSync: State of the art oil field logistics solutions allow well data provided by production companies to be stored on the cloud and selectively integrated with trucking companies’ data to increase accuracy and reduce errors. Information such as tank strappings and levels, exact locations, and other types of data can be coordinated through the cloud and provided as an add-on that allows oil trucking companies the ability to select their customer locations and details already uploaded to the system.

• Electronic Ticketing: Replacing paper run tickets eliminates the need for dispatchers and drivers to hand-write paper tickets, a practice that can introduce a significant numbers of errors. Drivers equipped with Bluetooth printers can print out tickets to deliver to shippers and receivers, and administrators no longer have to wait up to a week before invoicing.

State of the art logistics software changes the way the trucking industry operates, whether that is in the oil field or in other industries. By using new, cost-effective cloud-based applications, trucking companies can streamline logistics and day to day operations, enabling a real-time view of their businesses while adding to their profit margins.

Qv21 has chosen to partner with Rackspace as our cloud provider. Rackspace provides an extremely robust environment and expert infrastructure management. Qv21 owns a Private Cloud in Rackspace’s Chicago data center. This Private Cloud includes SQL servers, a management server, web servers, network and managed firewalls. By outsourcing our entire infrastructure to Rackspace, Qv21 can focus on its core business; logistics and application development. Utilizing a Private Cloud ensures that Qv21’s customers have the highest levels of data security

Just as we allow our customers to focus on their business and not worry about technology or scaling technology, Rackspace allows Qv21 to focus on our business. Bringing new server capacity online is as simple as a phone call or creating a service ticket. As well as providing infrastructure, Rackspace provides expertise. Qv21’s staff does not need to be experts in networking, firewall configuration or SQL clustering; these infrastructure related activities and tasks are all handled by Rackspace and are Rackspace’s expertise.

In addition to providing infrastructure for Qv21’s client facing services, Rackspace also provides a great deal of Qv21’s internal operational infrastructure. This includes email, SharePoint based document management and more.

Efficiency throughout the transportation industry is growing daily. When you’re ready to add greater efficiency and real-time situational awareness to your oil field logistics solutions or other industries, please contact www.Qv21.com. We welcome the opportunity to discuss your own unique situation so together we can help you attain optimal efficiency. We’re here to help.

As the cloud evolves, so to have ways to make the cloud work with resources that live outside of the cloud. This approach is called Hybrid Cloud. Our method for connecting cloud and dedicated resources is RackConnect®. With it, customers can run cloud resources and dedicated resources as if they were in the same environment. This would allow a cloud-fueled frontend to interact with databases on a dedicated backend. In the finance service example above, RackConnect could easily provide a seamless experience by connecting cloud and dedicated architectures to reap the benefits of cloud bursting and utility pricing while maintaining dedicated servers for security and compliance.

Hybrid Cloud is also a solution for those who aren’t ready to go all cloud yet. Though cloud is tried and tested in the business, there will always be those who prefer to work with existing technologies and legacy systems while still taking advantage of the cloud. RackConnect enables this by allowing an existing configuration to remain on dedicated servers while moving cloud-able pieces to the cloud.

If you’re considering a hybrid approach, here are five considerations laid out in the whitepaper “Nervous About Cloud? Go Hybrid Instead” to think about in planning:

1. How well do you understand your current application environment?
   Gather internal utilization reports that provide historical traffic and hardware performance statistics.
2. Do any regulatory or industry requirements need to be adhered to?
   Isolation is often required for compliance to standards such as PCI or HIPAA. They may also forbid the use of multi-tenant infrastructure.
3. Are all of the applications currently running certified or supported by their vendors to run in a virtualized environment?
   In some cases, software companies will not provide support if their application is installed on a virtualized platform.
4. Do you understand your current hardware environment?
   Server reports can be run to determine historical and average metrics such as processor, memory and disk utilization to understand the factors that cause spikes in CPU and memory use.
5. Has a budget been defined for this project?
   A hosting provider can work with you to help design a system that optimizes your investment while adhering to your technical and financial needs.

Read the entire whitepaper to understand more about Hybrid Cloud or engage us for a discussion about your needs and if Hybrid Cloud powered by RackConnect fits your unique use case.

Trey is a cloud evangelist with the Rackspace Startup Program. Check out the previous post in his SaaS series where Trey talked about how the cloud can improve the resource utilization of your SaaS app. Find out more about hosting your SaaS application at Rackspace.

That additional capacity hangs around all year sucking up power, floor space and maintenance time. During non-peak periods, these servers are likely sitting idle, but can potentially leave you vulnerable if peak demands were miscalculated or if there is a spike outside of your pre-determined peak. Until a few years ago, this was a nuisance that businesses just dealt with.

Cloud computing gives SaaS businesses the opportunity to provision resources as needed to close that resource gap. The elasticity of the cloud offers SaaS operators the flexibility to add resources to manage Black Friday, for example, and shrink back on Saturday. Unexpected spikes are also easier to manage with the ability to add cloud capacity in real time to handle the onslaught and roll it back when the spike subsides. With cloud-based SaaS architecture, the business is free to develop, test and deploy apps and releases without worrying about setting up or scaling servers to make it all run.

Planning for optimal resource utilization is an important element of SaaS planning. If poorly planned, user experience and response time can be degraded resulting in lost customers and damaged reputation. Our cloud experts can help you take the first steps toward moving to the cloud or help you explore a Hybrid Cloud approach that combines dedicated resources with cloud. Next week, we’ll talk more about the potential of hybrid cloud.

Trey is a cloud evangelist with the Rackspace Startup Program. Check out the previous post in his SaaS series where Trey talked about why SaaS startups begin their journey at Rackspace. In his next post, Trey discusses the benefits of a hybrid cloud for your SaaS app. Find out more about hosting your SaaS application at Rackspace.

I could give you dozen of reasons why Rackspace is the perfect incubator for your budding web app, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll run through the top five:

1. Instant Scale: Whether load testing or taking on a real unexpected traffic spike, you have access to massive infrastructure resources at your fingertips. And, unlike traditional hardware or dedicated resources, you have the flexibility of instantly tapping extra resources to carry you through a spike without being financially or physically stuck with unused hardware or a long-term commitment to capacity you no longer need.
2. CAPEX Savings: Keeping the balance sheet balanced is just as much of a priority as perfecting your code when you’re starting up. Making capital investments in architecture can put you in the hole before your first customer signs up. By converting that CAPEX investment into a fixed monthly expense, you’re likely to spend less time in the red paying off hardware and achieve profitability faster.
3. Startup Support: Our industry recognized Rackspace Startup Program has helped many SaaS operators, like YouGotListings, break into and claim their place in the SaaS market. Coupled with world-renowned Fanatical Support, startups get the help they need to get up and stay running.
4. Broad Portfolio: We’re built to serve entrepreneurs from their first server all the way up to the complex, multi-server configurations SaaS applications need to successfully compete in the market. Rackspace serves as a single provider solution for your entire infrastructure including compute, storage, databases, networks and more.
5. We’re Open: Running our cloud on OpenStack, the largest open cloud in production, gives you the advantage of web scale with the freedom to focus on coding your application without worrying about how or if you can move the application in the future.

For more reasons, give us a call to discuss the unique needs of your SaaS application and how our open cloud solutions can help you stay lean as you move from startup to started. I’ll be back next week to talk you about using cloud to gain maximum resource efficiency in your SaaS application.

Trey is a cloud evangelist with the Rackspace Startup Program. Check out the previous post in his SaaS series on scaling your SaaS app in the cloud. In his next post, Trey discusses how the cloud can improve the resource utilization of your SaaS app. Find out more about hosting your SaaS application at Rackspace.

How Cloud Scaling Works

When it’s time to scale vertically with physical or dedicated infrastructure you’ll have to deal with adding capacity to your existing servers. The process may include downtime and other infrastructure adjustments to access the additional resources. In the cloud, resources can be set to add automatically or you can instantly add capacity with a few clicks.

Similarly, the cloud alleviates the need to procure new hardware to accommodate horizontal scaling. In traditional environments, horizontal scale involves adding more servers to achieve more capacity. The time to receive the hardware and stand it up hinders agility and leaves you holding capacity you may only use occasionally. Horizontal scale in the cloud is as easy as a few clicks in the control panel to add more nodes – no hardware, no time to setup.

Three Benefits Of Cloud Scaling

1. More efficient use of resources because you’re not tied to hardware that you’re not actively utilizing.
2. Open API and control panel management allows you to set your parameters and let it run without babysitting servers.
3. Powered by OpenStack so you can move your application to another cloud or to your onsite data center without rebuilding your application code.

Over time, a complex SaaS environment will include a combination of these scaling techniques. Talk to our team of cloud experts for help in figuring out the best options for your workloads. Next week, we’ll talk about how SaaS startups use the cloud to stay lean.

Trey is a cloud evangelist with the Rackspace Startup Program. Check out the previous post in his SaaS series about cloud enhancements that your SaaS app can use today. In his next post, Trey will talk about why SaaS startups begin their journey at Rackspace. Find out more about hosting your SaaS application at Rackspace.

The cloud may not be right for your entire SaaS infrastructure; compliance and security issues will dictate which pieces can go cloud and which need dedicated hardware.

For a few quick cloud enhancements to your infrastructure, consider these areas where cloud-based services can help enhance your current SaaS environment:

Cloud Load Balancers: Your web layer and application layer need the ability to serve multiple users simultaneously. Once upon a time, load balancing required physical hardware and the expense and maintenance that come along with hardware ownership. Not anymore. Cloud Load Balancers let you balance traffic across resources to maintain user experience and functionality without additional hardware. You can balance servers on your Rackspace account or use it to balance servers in your data center.

Cloud Databases: SaaS apps rely heavily on their underlying databases to manage user accounts, product display, content and more. Scaling databases to hold and communicate the volumes of data and data relationships needed to manage your application in a general cloud environment can quickly get out of hand. Cloud Databases are built to take advantage of the cloud while accommodating the special needs of databases. You can reallocate the time needed to maintain, backup and secure the underlying hardware for your databases so you can focus on the data, not the server.

Open architecture: A common concern among SaaS operators considering the cloud is the fear of coding that perfect app on architecture that locks you in. With many cloud providers, that’s the case: moving your app to another vendor or moving it into your private data center means undertaking the daunting task of recoding critical pieces of your application. To eliminate that headache, Rackspace cloud products are built on open standards powered by OpenStack. That means you can move your app to any other OpenStack-compatible provider, even your onsite data center, without worrying about losing functionality.

These are just a few general ways to infuse the cloud into your SaaS application. Based on the unique needs of your app, there may be even more ways to take advantage of the cloud to reduce your hardware outlay and get more out of your application infrastructure.

Trey is a cloud evangelist with the Rackspace Startup Program. Check out his previous post on bash prompts and his next post on scaling your SaaS app in the cloud. Find out more about hosting your SaaS application at Rackspace.

Before you can attack either of these two areas, you’ve got to develop a SaaS solution that is timely because it solves a specific inefficiency within an organization and is clearly differentiated in the market. In most cases, this means creating an easy to use application that appeals to a specific persona (salesperson, marketing administrator, IT manager, etc.) and helps them perform a task or function that has historically been difficult to complete because of the complexities of their legacy software or because there wasn’t an application that addressed this particular need.

For instance, Jobs2Web provides “transformational technologies that straighten the path and break down the barriers, we’ve radically shortened the commute between your jobs and the people you want to hire.” The SaaS company’s “Recruiting Marketing Platform” automates many of the steps that were previously performed manually, increasing efficiency while reducing the costs of recruitment. (For more information, go to http://c488692.r92.cf2.rackcdn.com/CaseStudy_jobs2web_r02.pdf.)

Creating a winning SaaS app can take a lot of work and numerous iterations. It requires a keen understanding of the customer’s needs and preferences. And, it requires a rapid deployment capability and agility to out maneuver your competition. Time to market is essential in the SaaS marketplace because of escalating competition and rising expectations among customers that their “on-demand” applications will keep pace with their rapidly evolving needs. Therefore, the best SaaS companies have focused their energies and limited resources on building and promoting their solutions. These companies have also chosen to partner with leading Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers to satisfy their service delivery requirements.

Partnering with a leading IaaS provider makes sense for the following reasons:

Focus and Cost Mitigation

Contracting for IaaS not only makes sense because it enables the SaaS vendor to focus on developing winning apps, but also because few SaaS companies are able to predict their initial data center requirements or make the upfront investment in these costly resources. This is especially important as they try to keep their Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) and Cost of Service (COS) down as they build their Monthly Reoccurring Revenue (MRR) and TRuC (Total Revenue under Contract).

Investor Appeal

Managing their Customer Acquisition Cost to Sales (CACS) Ratio while optimizing Monthly Revenue is also critical to appeal to investors who are essential to funding future growth. The best venture capitalists and private equity firms fund SaaS companies that not only offer compelling solutions, but also demonstrate tight financial controls and a highly scalable operations model.

Service Reliability, Security and Scalability

Of course, delivering reliable and secure services is also crucial to mitigate risks and minimize churn. Losing customers is not only costly in terms of lost opportunities for additional account penetration, but also because it could tarnish a SaaS company’s reputation in the market if word spreads about subpar service quality.

Ultimately, optimizing Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) by maximizing the upsell and cross-sales opportunities within each customer account is dependent on delivering highly reliable, secure and productive SaaS solutions. While some might debate which business apps are “mission critical,” no one wants their SaaS app to be disrupted by a service outage that could prevent them from getting their jobs done. Therefore, teaming with an IaaS provider that can ensure maximum uptime and performance is essential.

Building a robust SaaS ecosystem that can provide customers with a set of complementary SaaS solutions can also increase customer loyalty. Ensuring SaaS integration and the ease of provisioning among multiple SaaS providers is imperative. Many SaaS vendors leverage IaaS providers’ security certifications and integration partners to address these issues quickly and economically. This can reduce their costs significantly. For instance, a SAS70 certification can cost $75,000 and take months to obtain. Leveraging integration tools from companies like Informatica and Pervasive can also accelerate the deployment process and increase the likelihood of success.

Monitoring, Measurement and Management

Finally, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. The best SaaS companies measure everything. They track every user keystroke to better understand how users utilize their solutions. And, they monitor all the systems that impact application performance to optimize their responsiveness while minimizing their operational costs.

The best SaaS companies depend on in-depth analytics to run their business as well as maximizing their service delivery capabilities. They track the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns, sales productivity and customer service satisfaction. They rely on integrated reporting systems within their marketing automation, customer relationship management (CRM) and IT service management (ITSM) systems. They also leverage the management portal of their IaaS provider to gain real-time visibility into their service delivery availability and performance levels.

SaaS companies that can gain a command over these KPIs are in the best position to succeed in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

The infrastructure needs of a SaaS application are tied to its purpose, functionality and long-term strategy. There are no one size fits all solutions. So, before I tell you that we’re the perfect fit for you, without knowing you or your requirements, here are a few of our current customers with the truth about what it’s like hosting their SaaS applications at Rackspace and how they’ve benefited from our relationship:

Better Performance: “Our entire environment must be on-demand…That means the underlying infrastructure must be able to expand as needed.”
Venkata Yella, Cloud Engineering Lead, X.commerce
Read case study

More Choice: “The ability to mix your dedicated and cloud hardware in a hybrid environment is a really exciting offering and a perfect mix of dedicated and private cloud — it lets you go into cloud in stages.” Peter Jacoby, CTO, Jobs2web
Read case study

Enhanced Agility: “Rackspace has been an incredibly valuable partner, allowing Marketo to scale operations quickly with minimal investments in internal operational resources.” Nick Bonfiglio, Vice President of Operations, Marketo
Read case study

Fanatical Support®: “They are there for us whenever we need them. Rackspace is an integral part in providing support to our IT team and we really appreciate it.” Mario Spanicciati, Executive Vice President of Operations, BlackLine Systems
Read case study

Thousands of customers trust us with their business not just because we have lots of floor space, servers and cables. Customers trust their apps to Rackspace for:

• Flexibility: Service that lets you trade in the large upfront capital expense of standing up SaaS app architecture in exchange for a fixed monthly operating expense.
• Expertise: Our team consists of seasoned web scale engineers versed in the intricacies of running large-scale applications.
• Support: When you pick up the phone to call us about your application, we pick up the phone to listen. Support is the core piece of what makes Rackspace different.

Now that you know the cold, hard truth about hosting your SaaS application at Rackspace, contact us to discuss your specific needs and how Rackspace can help.

If you’re looking for more SaaS content, be sure to watch Kevin’s previous video where he talked about three benefits of pod architecture for SaaS environments. Learn more about hosting SaaS applications at Rackspace.

Faster provisioning: Pods designed with identical architecture make setting up new users easier than having to customize configurations for individual users. You can leverage this standardized deployment architecture to help automate the provisioning of new users.

User customization: Individual pods can be customized with additional capacity to meet the unique needs of your users. Users needing additional computing power/capacity can get those extra resources in their pod without initiating infrastructure-wide changes. Segmenting a specific user on a single pod away from your other customers can eliminate the noisy neighbor effect. This isolates this noisy neighbor’s traffic, thereby mitigating the impact to your other users.

Improved scalability: As opposed to having to beef up your entire infrastructure to accommodate scaling for a single user, pod architecture allows you to drop in resources and remove them as needed on a user-by-user basis. This not only saves resources but also reduces your overall cost of doing business because additional resources are only deployed when and where they are needed.

We find that pod architecture is a great fit for SaaS applications at Rackspace that need maximum flexibility to accommodate various user types. However, there is no one size-fits-all answer. Our team can talk you through your specific needs to find the layout that’s right for you.

If you’re looking for more SaaS content, be sure to watch Kevin’s previous video where he talked about the Critical Application Services offering at Rackspace. You can also check out his next video where he discusses the advantages of hosting your SaaS application at Rackspace. Learn more about hosting SaaS applications at Rackspace.