Rackspace Email & Apps Blog

Recent Posts in the ‘Case Studies’ Category

One Email Outage Pays for a Year of Rackspace Email Hosting

Oct 8th, 2009 in Case Studies by Cameron Nouri

Steven Ng, Vice President of Professional Services for Acumetrics came to Rackspace after a hard drive failure took their email down for a week and reallocated Steven’s time from billable work to fixing email. Due to a failed backup, they also lost a week’s worth of email. By outsourcing their email to Rackspace, they now have dedicated support when they have email issues from our team of email experts.

According to Steven, “We lost enough time and money from one outage to pay for Rackspace hosting service for a year.” When they experienced a recent outage, they reviewed our resolution report and determined, “that issue would have taken us hours to diagnose and even longer to fix.” Outsourcing allows Steven to focus on growing their business while we worry about making sure his email is operational.

According to a report by Osterman Research there’s a 72% chance you’ll experience an unplanned email outage this year per. With each outage, businesses can expect an average of 62 hours of downtime. The report also shows that 41% of unplanned outages are due to technological issues: software configuration errors, outdated drives, or HVAC issues. Hardware failures alone accounted for over a quarter of unplanned outages. Even a short outage can have long-term consequence, like missing important customer communication, total loss of email data, and lost productivity.

With all the things that can go wrong with email, putting it in the hands of email experts makes sense. Rackspace’s email infrastructure is built on a redundant, clustered server environment with automatic failover measures.

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Portal Systems Saves 300 Hours a Year with Rackspace

Sep 28th, 2009 in Case Studies by Cameron Nouri

Portal Systems, a network solutions firm, uses the Rackspace Reseller Program to add value and reduce complexity for their clients. The Northern Virginia-based company currently manages about 100 clients under the reseller plan. “We were all ready managing the email accounts for our clients. As a reseller, we could do it all from one control panel without having to log in and out of the individual accounts,” says David Korte, Managing Partner of Portal Systems.

Rackspace resellers also enjoy volume pricing, API integration options, and marketing support without major equipment investments or huge upfront fees. With low monthly minimums and the option of Microsoft Exchange, Rackspace Email, or both, resellers can create a competitively priced and compelling offer to their customers. For David, that means his firm can work with smaller companies who need a few mailboxes and seamlessly scale to meet the needs of large clients needing hundreds of mailboxes.

Since using Rackspace for their clients’ email needs, Portal Systems has also seen the value of email hosting and moved their in-house email to Rackspace, returning the over 300 hours a year they were spending on email maintenance to more mission-critical activities. Read the Portal Systems case study to find out more about their experience with Rackspace, both as a reseller and customer. Visit the Rackspace Reseller Program page for more information on becoming a reseller.

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Rackspace Rescues MariTool from Deliverability Issues

Sep 17th, 2009 in Case Studies by Cameron Nouri

To thwart spam, email providers use aggregated blacklists to determine whether to deliver an email to the inbox or the spam folder, or reject it completely. The blacklist is a reference point for IP addresses identified as sending spam. The list is compiled from IP address traffic patterns and user feedback. Some providers allow their customers to participate in activities that increase the likelihood of winding up on a blacklist, like sending large volumes of email or repeatedly sending unsolicited email for marketing purposes.

Tom Fetcho, Project Manager at MariTool, was with an email provider who was blacklisted. “Communication is important in a web-based business and we feared losing customers because our emails weren’t getting to the inbox,” says Tom. Confidence in deliverability was his main concern, but email landing in the spam folder also threatened their professional image. “No one checks the spam folder, so either they’d think we didn’t respond or we’d have to ask them to check their spam folder, which makes us appear unprofessional,” explains Tom.

At Rackspace, we enforce strict policies to protect the reputation of our IP addresses and ensure deliverability of our customers’ email. MariTool can now be confident that their email isn’t mingling with spam in the spam folder; instead, their email gets the attention it deserves in the inbox.

Read the full MariTool case study to find out how Rackspace rescued their email from deliverability and accessibility issues with another provider.

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[Case Study] Uforia Regains 400+ Hours of IT Staff Time Annually by Choosing Rackspace

Jun 23rd, 2009 in Case Studies by Cameron Nouri

Silicon Valley-based Uforia, founded by online gaming industry veterans, specializes in massively multiplayer online games (MMOG). Uforia creates a unique online gaming experience where gamers play free online games with the ability to enhance their experience. Using micro-transactions to purchase online enhancements, gamers can make characters look different or increase functionality with weapons and accessories.

Due to their corporate structure, Chris Keswani, marketing manager, was relying on hardware and technical support resources based in their Korean offices. When his US-based office needed support with email, they were up against both a 17-hour time difference and communication difficulties between Korean speaking technicians and English speaking users. If Chris needed immediate changes made to his office’s email account at 2pm in the afternoon, the request could take a day or more to be fulfilled. The lack of control over email was becoming a real challenge. Additionally, the email tasks being asked of their highly skilled IT staff were taking their time away from more important projects.

“Our IT staff was spending over 400 hours every year supporting email for our employees,” says Chris “It was costing us time, money, and resources that could have been focused on mission critical projects.”

He’d heard about Rackspace from former colleagues who mentioned that our email solution worked well for them and was easy to use. After he and a few others in his organization evaluated Rackspace, they decided to go with Rackspace Email & Apps because of the affordable cost and the “need for timely support on something as critical as email, made it important to deal with a vendor who had the resources to be responsive.”

Chris now has a new convenience factor with email. He no longer has to wait to make changes or add new mailboxes. When he had questions about using distribution lists, he sent an email to our support department. By the time he got a cup of coffee and returned to his desk, he had an email with the answer he needed. “We work with lots of vendors via email or phone and it typically takes a long time to get answers back,” he says. He’s happy to have email that he doesn’t have to worry about and support that’s always available and responsive to his needs. Email is no longer a challenge and his staff is once again focused on games.

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[Case Study] IntervalZero Finds Internal Value by Choosing Rackspace

Jun 4th, 2009 in Case Studies by Cameron Nouri

IntervalZero Inc. designs and develops embedded software products that deliver real-time capability and meet the needs of the international embedded technology market. After a management buyout, IntervalZero of Waltham, Massachusetts, found themselves evaluating whether their email would be best served by an on-premise email solution with third party maintenance or a completely off-premises hosting solution.

According to Daron Underwood, Vice President of Engineering, “as important as email is, not having adequate resources to support it was not an option.” After carefully balancing the initial and ongoing costs of on-premises email, Daron decided that completely outsourcing email to Rackspace would provide the dedicated attention and expertise that modern email demands. More importantly, “focusing time and energy on IT would take us away from our core mission.”

While looking at Rackspace for other IT hosting needs, he discovered our email services. “I’d shopped around for other options but hadn’t seen any other solution that compared to the Rackspace Email & Apps offering,” says Daron. IntervalZero uses Rackspace for all of their mailboxes and takes advantage of the ‘Combine and Save’ option. Interval Zero maintains Rackspace Email web-based email and Microsoft Exchange mailboxes in the same domain, under the same account, and even manages them through the same control panel. Daron and his colleagues can provision Rackspace Email or Microsoft Exchange mailboxes based on specific user needs and save up to $11 per user, per month!

IntervalZero can keep a laser sharp focus on their business goals while enjoying the type of expert, accessible support they were accustomed to from having corporate level IT resources in house. Since the switch, Daron says he’s extremely satisfied with his service and experience with Rackspace.

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