Rackspace Email & Apps Blog

Recent Posts in the ‘Email & Apps Industry’ Category

Introducing… the Rackspace Rescue Plan for Zimbra Customers

Nov 10th, 2009 in Company News, Email & Apps Industry by Cameron Nouri

Recently it was reported that Yahoo is looking to sell Zimbra, a software development company focused on building open-source email and collaboration software—an attempt at a Microsoft Exchange alternative, if you will. Many look at this as a good move for Yahoo, as they look to focus on their core strategy as a media company.

But what does this mean for Zimbra’s 50 million users and customers? For those facing uncertainty, we’d like to offer some help. So today, we are introducing The Rackspace Rescue Plan for Zimbra customers, and we will be running with this until the fate of Zimbra is decided. We want to make it easy to move to Rackspace email services, for those who might be interested in moving off Zimbra’s platform.

Here’s what we are offering with our Rescue Plan:

Free Microsoft Exchange or Rackspace Email for three months
Free email migration performed by our migration experts
Fanatical Support® around the clock, as always

Interested in taking advantage of this opportunity? Give us a call, email us, or chat with us and let us know you’d like to take advantage of our Rescue Plan. We will walk you through all the steps to make this a painless transition and help you find some relief during this uncertain time.

The Fine Print

Rackspace will waive the monthly fee for three months for each Microsoft Exchange or Rackspace Email mailbox that is purchased as a part of this promotion. Customers will be asked to submit a form, along with proof that your domain was using Zimbra (i.e., a pdf/screenshot of a Zimbra account, a receipt or invoice for service). And of course, we reserve the right to end this promotion at any time.

Leave a Comment

Learn About the Facts & Fiction of Hosted Email

Nov 9th, 2009 in Email & Apps Industry by Cameron Nouri

We are excited to partner up with the team over at Spiceworks to put on a webinar focused on the truth behind hosted email. The webinar is scheduled for Tuesday, November 17, 2009 from 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM CST. This is meant to be an informative session that will aim to present objective information and data to help those out there who are trying to sort through the facts behind hosted email.

You can learn more about the webinar and sign up for it online.

Leave a Comment

Headed to Gartner Symposium IT Expo & Spiceworld 2009 – Are you?

Oct 16th, 2009 in Email & Apps Industry by Tom Thaddeus

We are always interested in talking to IT professionals about their business IT needs and how they provide solutions for their business users. We want to learn how we can continue to develop valuable services that are relevant to the needs of businesses today and the IT staffs that support them. That’s why, during the week of October 19-23, I will be at the Gartner Symposium IT Expo in Orlando, FL and SpiceWorld 2009 in Austin, TX (Hosted by Spiceworks) representing Rackspace Email & Apps.

Are you going to be there, too? Let me know in the comments, email me at tom.thaddeus [at] rackspace.com or stop by and see me when you’re there (that’s me in that picture above). I want to talk to you.

Leave a Comment

How Happy is Your IT Staff?

Oct 15th, 2009 in Email & Apps Industry by Michael Ferranti

As companies continue to need to lay off workers, the workload for the remaining lucky few has increased markedly. The recession is forcing us all to work smarter and faster, and IT is the natural place for businesses to look for ways to make that happen. It’s no surprise then that average hours worked per week for IT professionals are on the rise and that lives outside of work are suffering. According to a recent poll conducted by The IT Job Board, a full two-thirds of IT professionals feel that these long hours negatively affect their personal lives. Oh, and on the job performance is going down, too (34% of respondents believe that their productivity at work had decreased due to long hours).

In light of this gloomy situation, why not cut costs and increase morale? If you aren’t already, maybe it’s time to look at hosting for your business. If you are currently hosting with us, why not tell a friend what a winning proposition it is to free up precious IT hours to focus on core business objectives. Email Hosting saves significant money while freeing up IT staff to focus on core business problems, not routine maintenance, server upgrades, and service patch installs. We take care of all that, leaving tech-savvy employees to add value where it makes the biggest impact on the business. And, of course, if they can make it to that 6pm Happy Hour, we’ll all be the better for it.

Leave a Comment

IBM: Another Big ISV Tries Their Hand at SaaS

Oct 6th, 2009 in Email & Apps Industry by Lew Moorman

Last week, IBM announced their move to offer high volume cloud based email services. The offer, called LotusLive, is intended to counter the move to a new set of online offers like Google Apps, and our own Rackspace Email service. IBM is the latest in a long line of traditional enterprise software companies feeling the impacts of new SaaS models. And, like many of those companies, they intend to compete.

They need to. We currently host the email of several hundred thousand businesses and Google is using its free edition to get millions of businesses. IBM makes their money by selling software and service to enterprises. If those same businesses start buying turnkey services online, there is a big hole in the IBM business model.

But, based on history, IBM faces long odds. Since the dawn of the SaaS model, there has been literally no major ISV that has become a power in the SaaS space. Siebel, SAP, Microsoft, Intuit, Oracle, and many more large ISVs have made big splashes about online offers only to retreat (or admit defeat by buying major competitors, like Intuit’s acquisition of Mint.com).

Now, some, like Larry Ellison, will say, this is a tiny market, so who cares? So far, he is right. There is only one billion dollar company in the SaaS space (Salesforce.com). But, if history is not headed in this direction, why try at all? IBM clearly is admitting that the idea of cloud based software is the future. So now they have to compete. Will they meet with the same poor results? Here are some thoughts on why traditional ISVs have failed at this model and some thoughts on how they apply to IBM:

Skills gaps. SaaS is not the same as building and shipping code. Multi-tenancy, scaling, customer support, uptime reporting and community outreach are all integral parts of a SaaS business. This does not come naturally from innovation oriented, build it and ship it companies. IBM likely realized this when they bought Outblaze to drive the core of the new offer. While small and primarily a reseller enabler, Outblaze does give IBM a core set of SaaS oriented skills and mindset. The real risk is how well this mentality will be integrated? How long will this talent remain? A lot of it depends on the other risks.
Sales compensation. Sadly, sales comp is much of what makes the business world move. Every top ISV is built on the lump sum, perpetual sale. How you turn an organization into a machine to sell recurring revenue is a massive challenge. There is no place more ingrained in the big deal than IBM. So, barring a wholesale change to the IBM model, the idea that the massive IBM salesforce will be pitching this offer is a pipe dream.
Cannabilization. The NotesLive offer flat out competes with the core IBM on premise software plus services model. Combined with a compensation conflict, this is the most critical challenge facing a company like IBM. And, looking at their site, the whole effort seems to be a mass market attempt to generate leads for a salesforce. Just try to buy online. My hunch is the goal is not to sell $3/month accounts, but much larger solutions.
Enterprise vs. SMB. Related to the last point is the true commitment any of these companies have for the SMB market. SMBs are driving the move to SaaS, just as they drive almost any major shift in technology. SMBs are willing to compromise and sacrifice – a critical requirement to embrace the productized model. They also want a low price. The low end iNotes offer, from the looks of it, is not meant to sell, but generate interest. Look at this price sheet:

The set of compromises runs counter to our $1/month offer or Googles $50/year offer. Those are flagship products with full feature sets (calendaring, contacts, large storage, etc.) Given IBMs enterprise focused history, I am curious to see how far their commitment goes.

You can never take a behemoth like IBM coming into your market lightly. Believe me, we do not. However, in many ways their entrance is welcome. They have a voice much louder than ours and they are declaring openly that you should not run your own mail servers. Hallelujah! But, could they be the first major ISV to get it right in the SaaS world. They are as a good a candidate as any. But, for our money, those that are focused on this from the ground up are the real threats. For now, in the email and apps market, that is Google. Stay tuned for some thoughts on that battle.

2 Comments

Who Is Number 1?

Oct 1st, 2009 in Email & Apps Industry by Andy Schroepfer

A recent Wall Street Journal story included mention that Rackspace is the second largest business email hosting provider. The article failed to mention who is number one. Will the number one provider please stand up?

Bueller? Bueller?

To spare you any more suspense, we expect the leader is Google. Since Google does not provide specifics about its number of paid subscribers, we invite your help.

Rackspace’s most recent disclosure is that we have 1.4 million paid subscribers. In mid-July when Gmail came out of beta, Google said it had 1.75 million companies running Google Apps (including paid and free).

We would like to invite analysts, the media and others to research and confirm who is #1 and ask you to write about the conclusion in this comment section, on twitter with hashtag #num1, and on your own blog. We also ask that Google and others near the one million paid mailbox mark to join the conversation directly.

We know many businesses do use free email services. Nothing wrong with that. However, there is a big difference between business class email and email that is used in a business. If Rackspace is in fact #2, we are very pleased. Of course we want to be #1 in this (and all) category of IT computing services, but since our paid subscriber base has far surpassed the one million paid mailbox milestone without much of any marketing, we are certainly doing something right. Based on feedback from our customers, that “something right” includes our delivery of a business class service, at a price point that delivers cost savings, and is backed by Fanatical Support.

Email has been a stale topic of conversation, but since the era of self hosted email has climaxed, massive market share shift is underway to hosted applications from Google, Rackspace, and others. As the 100s of millions of mailboxes continue moving from servers running Exchange and Lotus Notes in-house, we believe the time is now for this discussion to be kicked up a notch for the benefit of the millions of businesses who need to get rid of their email servers and find a new and better way to do mail. Whether Google is the leader or whether it is any one of our many competitors trying to win and sustain all business email accounts, we want everyone to know that Rackspace believes in this business, are investing heavily, and plan to share some big plans in the coming months.

This is a massive opportunity where several firms will succeed. We at Rackspace are serious about this battle. We thank you for your help in determining who is currently in the lead and for continuing to monitor the battle for long-term leader check back right here at the Rackspace Email & Apps blog from time to time.

5 Comments

Don’t Put All “Emails” In One Basket

Sep 24th, 2009 in Email & Apps Industry by Andy Schroepfer

There is a proven theory in the investing world about how one should not put all their eggs in one basket. In a word, diversification. The logic of diversification has been applied to many circles of life, but it is now proving to be good advice in communications, especially email.

Several of the consumer email providers have been trying to service business customers in recent years. Microsoft began with MSN mail, added Hotmail, and now has Live Mail, which accepts subscriptions from individuals as well as micro businesses. Google is another example, where Gmail is offered to both consumers as well as universities and businesses under Google Apps. Having both one’s personal and work email in one account with the same provider might sound like a move that simplifies life, but it exposes additional risks when outages happen.

This is coming to light for users of Gmail today, which is having another unfortunate service outage. (Full Disclosure: We admit we are not perfect either) A tweet message from @eskobarnow hits on this exact point. When your personal email account is unavailable, you can use your work account for important personal emails. Vice versa when your work email is down. However, as @eskobarnow points out, one can be “screwed” when a single outage makes both your work and personal account inaccessible.

These days, the ability to easily import contacts and files from one system to another is rather easy in many cases. Accordingly, the benefits of using the same provider for work and personal email are lessened. Some providers allow two accounts to be viewed in a single inbox view, which is surely more elegant then using forwarding rules to accomplish the same. HOWEVER, what good is it to have all messages from two or more different accounts on the same inbox, when the inbox is not accessible?

Yes, diversification works in the email world just as it does in investments.

1 Comment

Connect With Us