Rackspace Cloud

With the Cloud, many developers and companies can now afford to have a true test and development configuration to ensure that their code deployments will work properly in the production environment.  Setting up these types of environments is valuable because not only can the development team determine if their code works, they also can discover the associated downtime with deploying it.  But did you know that you can use the Cloud in a similar manner to help diagnose a problem that your configuration might be facing?

In just a few short years, cloud computing has transformed from an interesting buzzword into the future of the Internet. Rackspace has been on the leading edge of the cloud computing revolution, helping businesses and professionals get real value from the promise of the cloud. We’ve put together this Top 10 list of the most common cloud computing use cases illustrating our point of view on where we’ll see the cloud having the biggest impact in 2012.

This post originally appeared on Paul Querna’s blog and we have reposted it here with his permission.

Good, well functioning websites don’t happen by accident. They are the result of a lot of behind the scenes work – developing an idea, writing code to handle all of the different tasks and making sure everything runs smoothly on every page. Above all, the website needs to be sturdy enough to handle heavy traffic.

At Rackspace we pride ourselves on Fanatical Support in all we do. The public face of Fanatical Support is having knowledgeable people ready to help customers when they need it. But behind the scenes, Fanatical Support means leveraging technology to improve every aspect of the customer experience.

Before cloud computing, only the biggest and richest companies could afford complex, multi-server environments to meet their IT needs. These types of tiered configurations provided increased performance, stability, and redundancy along with luxuries like separate staging environments for testing. The essence of the cloud revolution is making these options accessible to all organizations, without forcing them to expand their IT spend.

I am pleased to announce that today we begin taking applicants for the Rackspace Cloud Monitoring Private Beta. This is especially exciting because we will be offering technology created and integrated post-acquisition of Cloudkick joining the Rackspace family.

Ben is the founder and managing director of Diversity Limited, a consultancy specializing in Cloud Computing/SaaS, Collaboration, Business strategy and user-centric design.  In 2011, he is curating the CloudU program sponsored by Rackspace.

Last week’s webinar, Introduction to Rackspace® Cloud Servers™ with a Managed Service Level, was a topic that garnered much attention. Hosted by Lew Moorman (President‚ Cloud & Chief Strategy Officer), Frederick Mendler (Vice President‚ Sales & Marketing) and Paul Salisbury (Director‚ Managed Service Level‚ Rackspace Cloud), the webinar drew more than 550 attendees.

It is our pleasure to extend a special holiday gift to you that will keep on giving. Effective today, the Rackspace Cloud has lowered its Bandwidth Out pricing from $0.22/GB to $0.18/GB. That is a savings of nearly 20%!