Tag Archives: Hosting

Bulgarian Rax.bg certified as Cloud computing Service Provider on the VMware vCloud Air Network Program

SOFIA, Bulgaria, 28-Jun-2016 — /EPR INTERNET NEWS/ — RAX.bg, a provider of Private, Public and Hybrid Cloud computing, today announced its entry into the VMware vCloud® Air™ Network, with RAX vCloud Private, Public and Hybrid Cloud Servers, a VMware IaaS Powered service. This designation illustrates to customers that the company’s public cloud service is validated using and compatible for use with VMware vSphere®, the leading virtualization platform for building cloud infrastructures.

A member of the VMware vCloud Air Network, RAX provides its VMware IaaS Powered service using proven VMware technology that organizations already use in their existing data centers. VMware vCloud Air Network Service Providers offer global cloud services in more than 100 countries.

“VMware IaaS Powered services delivered by VMware vCloud Air Network Service Providers can provide the efficiency, agility, and reliability inherent in cloud computing,” said Graham Crich, Director, Cloud and Service Provider Partners, EMEA, VMware. “We look forward to supporting RAX further as it empowers organizations with a simple and flexible path to the cloud.”

Customers of RAX have the ability to move workloads from their VMware vSphere-based virtualized or private cloud environment to the VMware IaaS Powered service. This allows customers to achieve flexibility and security, while enabling increased IT agility.

RAX sought VMware IaaS Powered validation in order to improve its overall cloud computing capabilities, to add high availability and automated fault tolerance to its public and private cloud services and to provide more businesses with the opportunity to take advantage of VMware’s unique hybrid cloud computing technology. As a VMware vCloud Air Network Service Provider, RAX can now provide users with enhanced responsiveness and agility, and enable reduced IT costs through greater performance, availability and scalability.

The service debuted on June 15, 2016.

SOURCE: EuropaWire

FastVision Web Hosting Success

FastVision the UK based hosting company in Cheltenham has been growing rapidly making it one of the fastest growing hosting companies in the UK. In its 10th year of Business FastVision has now not only won hosting awards but also the hearts of the customers. The great lengths that the customer service team and technical support guys have gone to is clear as FastVision has glowing reviews all over the internet when other Hosting providers seem to be struggling with negative reviews and even hate sites setup informing potential new customers about terrible experiences.

As with all business with company growth the most important factor of success is planning ahead and ensuring that the resources are available before the growth of clients and in the hosting environment this is far more important to get right than any other business.

Investment into hardware ensuring that the servers are running fast and load balancing clients across servers to keep the servers running optimal. Web services can be difficult to manage if the process is not controlled due to the nature of hosting as individuals or companies using shared hosting will be in control of uploading files that can potentially have problems. This is where most hosting companies fall over with failures to other clients due to one client doing something wrong.

Speaking with the Director of FastVision, he explained how his passion for success is fuelled by the glowing reviews and all the investment into new hardware, bespoke hosting software and data centre facilities has been a major part of the success story of FastVision as a business. He also explained that FastVision on a daily basis has people moving from other hosting providers to the FastVision network when the drop off of clients from FastVision is minimal and this gives a good indication that we are doing something right.

Customer service is something that every hosting company should invest in and yet the competitors appear to focus less on this, but this lack of customer care has helped with FastVision’s growth.

The FastVision network is one of the fastest hosting networks available in the shared and business hosting areas and this is something that FastVision work very hard to get right. The pricing structure is also one of the most competitive available with starter hosting at only £1.49 per month and this hosting package allows you to host unlimited websites within a single account, something no other hosting company can compete with.

The high end Business hosting is one of FastVision most popular accounts offer everything from 100,000 MB of web space and 200 IMAP / POP mail boxes with 400,000 MB of space for emails, 15 x MySQL Databases with 15,000 MB of storage space and to top it off the business hosting also comes with a FREE 2048 bit SSL certificate and all this for only £9.99 a month.

Dedicated server hosting and cloud hosting is something that FastVision are now pushing hard and it seems again that they have ticked all the boxes and the planning for the services before going live will make this a massive success.

For more information about the FastVision hosting services visit fastvision.com/Hosting.fvnx

FastVision are also starting to dominate the domain registrations of .co.uk domain names due to being selling domain names at the lowest prices available on the internet.

The domain name search checker page offers at a quick glance a list of all types of domains avaialble and registered.

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Namesco Urges Customers To Switch To Annual Packages

Leading Internet solutions company, Namesco, are urging customers to switch to annual payment packages on web hosting tools, as recent findings have shown consumers are generally paying too much for windows hosting packages on the open market.

A recent study, conducted by Namesco themselves, suggests that whilst monthly payment plans on web hosting products may seem cheaper, in reality users are ultimately paying more.

The company claims they could save their customers two months worth of monthly payments if they simply switched to their annual payment scheme- when upgrading their web hosting tools.

The study also showed that most Internet sites, selling web hosting products to consumers, displayed the price of their packages at a monthly rate, effecting purchasing behavior.

“It’s just a form of psychological pricing really.” said a spokesperson for Namesco, commenting on the findings. “Web hosting packages often seem cheap because the payment rates are shown ‘per month’ instead of ‘per year’. Of course, if consumers changed the price to ‘per year’ the price would seem a lot higher.”

“However, if consumers just did the calculations, they’d find that they’re in fact paying more when opting to pay on a monthly basis. We’re urging all our customers to switch from their monthly hosting plans to annual payments when they upgrade their web packages- they’ll get the equivalent of two months payment free.”

Customers, who currently own a registered Namesco account, can easily upgrade their web hosting package by logging-on to the company’s website.

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Fasthosts Launches New Business Broadband Packages

Fasthosts Internet Ltd, a leading web hosting and Internet services provider, has announced a brand new range of ADSL packages specifically designed for business needs. The Fasthosts Broadband range is now faster and more feature-packed, with a 24Mb entry-level package. A new fibre optic package offers up to 40Mb downloads, over 7 times faster than the UK average, enabling businesses to increase productivity and fully benefit from hosted services and cloud computing.

The Fasthosts Business Broadband range now comprises: the entry-level ADSL Lite (with 20GB monthly usage), alongside unlimited plans ADSL Premium, and ADSL 2 Plus both featuring a download speed of up to 24Mb. Furthermore, Fasthosts’ new unlimited flagship VDSL Premium package uses fibre optic technology to deliver up to a massive 40Mb download connection, and up to 10Mb upload speeds. Packages benefit from free set-up, and up to 2 static IP addresses.

Fasthosts Business Broadband is equipped to deliver business users consistently high speed connections and value for money. With unlimited usage, businesses can download whatever they need to at all times, without the need to restrict users. Up to 40Mb speeds better equip firms to efficiently perform data intensive tasks such as sending and receiving large documents, graphics or media files, video conferencing or using web-based software. Faster ADSL can bring to life more flexible working with quicker VPN access to internal systems. By using the inclusive IP addresses, businesses can reduce their communications costs with IP and video calling.

Steve Holford, marketing director, Fasthosts Internet Ltd., said: “Many businesses prefer an all-in-one approach to buying their Internet services. For some, that means making-do with either sub-standard hosting or ADSL bolted-on by their ISP. With Fasthosts firms can benefit from truly business-class broadband alongside high performance and award-winning UK hosting services”.

Fasthosts provides UK-based business broadband experts, on hand to provide free support by telephone or online.

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Interact entered into an agreement to join the Rackspace Partner Programme

Interact, a leading supplier in intelligent intranet software, today announced they have entered into an agreement to join the Rackspace Partner Programme with Rackspace® Hosting, the world’s leading specialist in the hosting and cloud computing industry.

This agreement will enable Interact to provide its customers with a fast and reliable secure intranet solution hosted by Rackspace. The use of hosted software has become a sensible option for many businesses and offers a great alternative to a network based application. Hosting enables access to the intranet anywhere / anytime via a web browser which enhances collaboration opportunities for distributed or remote users. It also reduces pressure on limited in-house IT resources as there is no software to deploy or servers to maintain.

Interact Intranet is an easy to use, collaborative turnkey solution trusted by over 250,000 users. It is an intelligent intranet solution that learns as people use it, adapts and automatically connects relevant information to people. Powerful enterprise networking tools actively promote internal communication, collaboration, idea sharing and cross-organisation participation. It is modular in its architecture allowing organisations to add the components, resources, and services that are required as the business evolves and grows.

Scott Hitchins, Global Partner Manager at Interact, believes that hosted solutions are increasingly popular today for their ability to offer enterprise level system functionality with the advantages of zero maintenance overhead or initial capital outlay. “The financial investment and overhead of owning and maintaining servers and software applications in-house can be substantial. Rackspace hosting services will deliver a powerful and cost-effective intranet solution for our customers with rapid deployment and unparalleled scalability and flexibility in a secure environment. Rackspace offer a 100% network and infrastructure uptime guarantee which will ensure that Interact is always accessible”

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Rackspace Hosting Announces General Availability of Cloud Servers for Windows

Rackspace Hosting (NYSE: RAX), the world’s leading specialist in hosting and cloud computing, has announced the general availability of its Cloud Servers for Windows offering. The new service delivers a highly scalable environment ideal for Windows-based hosting, testing and developing applications and supporting the high levels of traffic required for launching online gaming platforms or the next social networking phenomenon.

Designed for small to medium businesses, .NET developers, system administrators, IT Pros, and current Rackspace customers, Cloud Servers for Windows features include:
– Custom configurations with full administrator access
– Ability to upgrade server size on-demand
– Add or delete servers on the fly
– Rescue mode
– Management via the Rackspace Cloud Control Panel and the Cloud Servers API
– Ability to add additional IP addresses
– Pay only for what you use with a utility payment model with hourly billing; no contracts or upfront costs
– Backups and Snapshots to Cloud Filesâ„¢ (coming soon)
– Enterprise-class SLAs
– Support for a broad array of the latest Microsoft Windows Server Images including:
Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition 64-bit; Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 Enterprise Edition 64-bit; Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 Enterprise Edition 32-bit; Windows Server 2003 R2 Service Pack 2 Enterprise Edition 64-bit and Windows Server 2003 R2 Service Pack 2 Enterprise Edition 32-bit

“Microsoft is committed to delivering a broad set of enterprise-ready products and services that build on the existing capabilities and skill sets of service providers like Rackspace,” said John Zanni, general manager of Worldwide Hosting for the Communications Sector at Microsoft Corp. “As a long time partner of one of the industry’s top cloud hosting providers, we are excited that Rackspace’s Cloud Servers for Windows offering has exited beta and is now available to the thousands of businesses that have built their infrastructure around Microsoft Windows and Microsoft .NET technologies.”

SpaBooker, a SaaS scheduling and point-of-sale (POS) application specifically designed for the spa, salon and wellness industry, utilizes Rackspace’s hybrid solution by using managed dedicated servers in addition to their cloud computing solution, Cloud Servers for Windows. Daniel Lizio-Katzen, SpaBooker Managing Director, states: “When we set out to look for a cloud computing solution, we didn’t hesitate to look at Rackspace Cloud first as we’ve been very pleased with the high level of support received from their managed dedicated servers. Rackspace Cloud Servers has been the ideal solution to separate our actual application from our public facing website. We currently have our entire staging environment running on the Cloud Servers for Windows Beta and the overall ease of use has been phenomenal. The cost savings compared to traditional dedicated hosting are also substantial.”

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Rackspace Announces Plans To Collaborate With NASA On OpenStack Project

Rackspace Hosting has announced the launch of OpenStack, an open-source cloud platform designed to foster the emergence of technology standards and cloud interoperability.

rackspaceNEWlogo.jpg (198×70)

Rackspace, the leading specialist in the hosting and cloud hosting industry, is donating the code that powers its Cloud Files and Cloud Servers public-cloud offerings to the OpenStack project. The project will also incorporate technology that powers the NASA Nebula Cloud Platform. Rackspace and NASA plan to actively collaborate on joint technology development and leverage the efforts of open-source software developers worldwide.

“Modern scientific computation requires ever increasing storage and processing power delivered on-demand,” said Chris Kemp, NASA’s Chief Technology Officer for IT. “To serve this demand, we built Nebula, an infrastructure cloud platform designed to meet the needs of our scientific and engineering community. NASA and Rackspace are uniquely positioned to drive this initiative based on our experience in building large scale cloud platforms and our desire to embrace open source.”

OpenStack will feature several cloud infrastructure components including a fully distributed object store based on Rackspace Cloud Files. The next component planned for release later this year is a scalable compute-provisioning engine based on the NASA Nebula cloud technology and Rackspace Cloud Servers technology. Using these components, organisations would be able to turn physical hardware into scalable and extensible cloud environments using the same code currently in production serving tens of thousands of customers and large government projects.

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Rackspace Hosting Updates Rackspace Hybrid Email for 1.7 Million Users

Rackspace Hosting (NYSE: RAX), the world leader in the hosting and cloud computing industry, has enhanced its popular Rackspace Hybrid Email offering – a custom mix of Hosted Microsoft Exchange and the business-focused Rackspace Email platform on a single domain. Rackspace Hybrid Email now features easy calendar viewing between Hosted Microsoft Exchange and Rackspace Email, as well as a faster webmail design for Rackspace Email to make businesses using Rackspace Hybrid Email even more productive.

Rackspace Hosting Updates Rackspace Hybrid Email for 1.7 Million Users

“We’ve learned from our customers that, on average, only a small percentage of employees really need and use the advanced features of Microsoft Exchange, yet many businesses are paying a lot more to run Exchange for every single user,” said Kirk Averett, director of product for cloud applications at Rackspace. “With Rackspace Hybrid Email, companies can purchase a combination of Exchange and low cost Rackspace Email accounts on a single domain, without sacrificing features for any employee. Most businesses can realise a significant cost savings by utilising this model because they have different types of email users.”

Rackspace Hybrid Email has been a key attraction for Rackspace solution partners and resellers because it provides another unique selling point, in addition to Rackspace’s Fanatical Support. Businesses can reduce total costs by substituting even one Exchange user with Rackspace Email. For example, using an average 80/20 ratio of Rackspace Email to Hosted Exchange, businesses can save more than 60 percent on email with Rackspace Hybrid Email compared to Hosted Exchange alone, and significantly more than hosting their own email in-house.

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Rackspace Named IT Operator of the Year at the Green IT Awards

Rackspace, the world’s leader in the hosting and cloud computing industry has been announced as the winner of the coveted title of IT Operator of the Year in the prestigious Green IT Awards

“We’re absolutely thrilled to be recognised as IT Operator of the Year by The Green IT Awards,” said Rackspace Managing Director Brian Thomson. “We’ve worked hard not only to make our customer offering sustainable, but also introduce internal initiatives such as employee education and recycling. We’re also very proud of our energy efficiency technology in our Slough data centre that uses energy efficient measures including dual-core AMD Opteron processors and ambient cooling technology. We plan to continue to introduce even more initiatives over the coming years and work harder than ever to be green.”

Over 75 organisations were nominated for The Green IT Awards and winners were selected by readers of the Green IT magazine and its website. The Green IT Awards are a benchmark by which IT companies are measured for environmental performance. The awards also showcase the role played by green marketing and sustainability communications in informing people about green issues, products and lifestyle choices, and provide examples of excellence and best practice in communicating sustainability and green issues.

Rackspace’s overall ‘green’ activity is designed to support its commitment to contributing towards the larger environmental solution. The company believes that “green” activity makes business sense as well as environmental sense. Rackspace has adopted several initiatives over the past two years to help reduce its environmental impact:

– The Slough data centre (DC), designed to use energy efficient technology, provides 55,000 square foot of net technical space, and has been built to help ensure efficient use of energy. Cooling is a key element of energy use in all data centres and Rackspace has deployed ambient cooling technology

– Through International Tree Foundation (ITF), Rackspace has agreed to have a tree planted for every new customer, as a way to mitigate some of the carbon generated through its hosting solutions.

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Rackspace Urges UK Businesses To Update Legacy IT To Stay Ahead

Rackspace, the world’s leader in hosting and cloud computing, has released the findings of its latest commissioned research which indicates that UK businesses may be missing opportunities around new approaches to technology and continuing to over-invest in legacy IT.

Rackspace Urges UK Businesses To Update Legacy IT To Stay Ahead

The research, surveying over 400 IT decision makers, including 218 from the UK, revealed that 93% of the UK companies surveyed do not believe that they have a cutting-edge approach to adopting new technology.

The survey also highlighted that less than a third (28%) believe they are ‘early adopters’ of new technology approaches, such as on-demand computing, which may indicate a need for better education on the benefits of moving to new IT systems. This finding is reinforced by Forrester’s report* that around half of IT software budgets are spent on maintaining or upgrading old solutions. Therefore, it appears that companies are not investigating how new technologies can support and evolve their business.

Brian Thomson, EMEA Rackspace Managing Director commented: “Organisations are under intense pressure to innovate, but the majority simply don’t have enough time to do this. IT staff seem to be tearing their hair out, with almost half (48%) of the (UK) survey respondents keen to get involved in more proactive, strategic initiatives, but UK respondents indicated that less than a third (27%) of their IT team’s time is spent on them. However, we are starting to see an evolution in the way IT is managed for everything from servers to social media, with many organisations looking to external experts to free up time that will enable them to focus on developing the business.

“Our business is a good example of this evolution in outsourcing servers, where we deployed more than 2,000 servers in the last three months of 2009, taking the total number of servers we manage to almost 57,000.”

When considering server solutions, respondents stated reliability (78%) and utilisation (76%) as the most important, indicating that uptime and efficiency are top of today’s server management needs.

Almost half of the UK IT decision makers (41%) stated a lack of knowledge or experience as the biggest concern when calling IT supplier helplines, followed by time taken to access support (36%) a lack of overnight assistance (36%), and rude, unhelpful staff (30%). This indicates a real need for IT organisations to review the level of support they are providing, which can help to avoid customer churn.

Brian Thomson concluded: “These findings indicate to us that organisations are being hindered by in-house IT systems and that there is a real need to focus on strategic initiatives to help the business. We believe this means a new approach to technology is on the horizon as organisations look to hosting, cloud computing and SaaS to power corporate computing and boost competitive edge.”

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Fasthosts Launches New Hosting Packages

Fasthosts Internet Ltd, a leading web hosting provider, has launched a brand new range of premium-quality shared web hosting packages that represent the company’s latest step in its drive to raise the standard of UK web hosting. The new packages combine huge quotas of web space with new professional-quality web building and monitoring tools, and Fasthosts’ unlimited website traffic. As the market for hosted solutions continues to grow apace, the new hosting range is designed to exceed the growing technical demands of businesses and IT professionals alike.

Fasthosts’ new range of Personal Hosting packages comprise the Standard package (5GB web space), and the Premium package (25GB web space). Both solutions include all the tools needed to maintain a professional-quality website with free SiteBuilder, Blog tool and MatrixStats. The Premium package boasts 10 FTP accounts, 10 x 1GB anti- virus/SPAM mailboxes and 1 free .UK domain.

Fasthosts’ new Business Hosting Packages are the Business Standard package (25GB web space), and Business Premium package (50GB web space). The flagship Business Premium delivers unlimited FTP accounts, up to 10 MYSQL databases and Load Balancing – which shares visitors over multiple web servers to maximise the uptime and speed of a website. All hosting packages are available in either Linux or Windows at no additional cost, an approach unique to Fasthosts.

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Rackspace Puts Microsoft SharePoint in the Cloud

Rackspace Hosting (NYSE:RAX), the world’s leader in hosting, has announced the launch of hosted Microsoft SharePoint, the popular collaboration and file sharing platform, uniquely backed by Rackspace’s 24x7x365 Fanatical Support. With the addition of hosted

Microsoft SharePoint, Rackspace’s suite of cloud applications now includes business-class collaboration, email and storage solutions.

Rackspace Puts Microsoft SharePoint in the Cloud

“With SharePoint, Rackspace is offering businesses the most powerful file sharing and collaboration software on the market today,” said Pat Matthews, General Manager of Rackspace Email & Apps. “With our cloud delivery model, businesses can take advantage of all the power Microsoft SharePoint has to offer without the hassle of having to manage the software in-house. Microsoft SharePoint backed by Fanatical Support is the recipe our customers have been asking for.”

The Rackspace offering includes an intuitive control panel that allows administrators to quickly initiate SharePoint, add/remove users, and create SharePoint sites with only a few steps. The control panel also gives administrators the ability to manage Rackspace Email & Apps’ full suite of applications, including hosted Microsoft Exchange, Rackspace Email, Email Archiving, and Rackspace Cloud Drive and Server Backup, in one dashboard.

With SharePoint from Rackspace, employees can become better equipped to collaborate on projects and share ideas across the organisation, with a centralized place to store, organise, and access documents.

About Rackspace Hosting
Rackspace Hosting is the world’s leader in hosting and cloud computing and has been ranked in the Financial Times Top 50 Great Place to Work in the United Kingdom for the past five years. Rackspace provides its customers with Fanatical Support by delivering a portfolio of hosted IT services, including Managed Hosting, Cloud Hosting, Virtualisation,Dedicated Servers and Email and Apps.

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Rackspace Reports Success At National Customer Service Awards

Rackspace Hosting, the world’s leader in hosting and cloud computing, has announced it has won ‘Customer Service Team of the Year for B2B’ and the highest honour ‘Customer Service Team of the Year’ at the annual National Customer Service Awards.

Brian Thomson, EMEA Managing Director at Rackspace, commented: “We are pleased to win an award that highlights our complete dedication to our customers. It is a great testament to our Fanatical Support promise and the relentless work our ‘Rackers’ do to exceed customer expectations every single day.”

Rackspace’s ‘Intensive Team’ beat stiff competition from Telefonica O2 UK Limited, Virgin Holidays and the Isle of Man Bank to win the coveted awards, which recognise commitment to high standards of customer service, both through personal dealings with customers and by contributing to the overall customer care policy via the company’s involvement in communications, problem solving and innovation.

The team, managed by George Bray, looks after the most complex hosting solutions, including multiple server configurations, and has helped maintain customer retention and the Fanatical Support promise.

Thomson concluded: “2009 has been a great year for recognition of Rackspace’s commitment to customers and employees as it has been named as a top 10 company for
customer focus in Europe, voted 15th best company to work for by the Sunday Times 100 Best Companies Awards and presented with a Financial Times Laureate Award for being one of the Best Places to Work in the UK for five years running.”

About Rackspace Hosting:
Rackspace Hosting UK is the world’s leader in hosting and cloud computing and has been ranked in the Financial Times Top 50 Great Place to Work in the United Kingdom for the past five years. Rackspace provides its customers with Fanatical Support by delivering a portfolio of hosted IT services, including Green Hosting, Dedicated Servers, Private Cloud, Hybrid Hosting, Email and Apps.

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Rackspace Hosting Launches Enhanced Partner Network

Rackspace Hosting (NYSE:RAX), the world’s leader in hosting and cloud computing, has restructured its global Rackspace Partner Network to help partner companies grow their business, better serve customers and realise a competitive advantage. Rackspace actively solicited feedback from its partners to make enhancements to the Rackspace Partner Network, which include a new tiered structure, highly competitive financial incentives, greater access to training and marketing resources.

To add more structure and clarity to the program, Rackspace created four levels of commitment based on company size and level of sales: Platinum, Gold, Silver and Member. Additionally, Rackspace is offering partners aggressive commissions and, at certain partnership levels, will even pay commissions on upgrades and renewals, a significant benefit many competitors fail to match.

“We regard partners as an extension of the Rackspace family and have updated the Rackspace Partner Network to help ensure they receive the services and support necessary for long-term success,” said Robert Fuller, vice president of Rackspace’s Worldwide Channel. “Rackers worked closely with our partners to develop a program that creates the biggest impact and provides the best experience for them, which we believe will in turn impact the broader customer experience.”

Rackspace’s enhanced partner program includes several features available for partner companies at any level of membership, including:
– Access to a dedicated sales representative
– Sales and technical training
– OnBoarding support
– Access to the Rackspace Partner Network portal with exclusive marketing, sales and industry information as well as networking opportunities with other Rackspace partners

As companies move along the continuum from Member Partnership to Platinum Partnership, the new Rackspace program offers additional benefits including:
– Access to a dedicated channel manager
– Access to the searchable partner database on Rackspace.com as well as the database on the Rackspace Partner Network portal
– An opportunity to participate in partner company and/or Rackspace generated marketing activities
– Inclusion in promotions to Rackspace customer and partner base
– Discounts/commissions on upgrades and renewal contracts

“Sitecore has built its foundation on providing partners and customers with the best Web CMS platform, so it’s a natural extension to partner with Rackspace for its unmatched service and reliable hosting solutions,” said Jason Crea, VP, Client and Partner Engagement Sitecore, a new member of the Rackspace Partner Network. “Performance, security, scalability and price are critical elements for our customers in building and hosting websites, blogs, and other Web applications. Based on Rackspace’s past successes we anticipate a valued experience for our joint customers.”

“Q just entered its second decade of designing, building and enhancing brands online. Rackspace has been with us since the beginning, and we’re excited to re-launch our partnership in the program and reaffirm our shared commitment to support,” said Sean Breen, Founder and CTO, Q-Industries, a longstanding and valued Rackspace partner. “Rackspace continues to provide the critical infrastructure that both Q and our clients need to maximize ROI and minimize capital expenditures.”

About Rackspace Hosting
Rackspace Hosting UK is the world’s leader in hosting and cloud computing and has been ranked in Financial Times Top 50 Great Place to Work in the United Kingdom for the past five years. Rackspace provides its customers with Fanatical Support by delivering a portfolio of hosted IT services, including Green Hosting, Managed Hosting, Dedicated Servers, Private Cloud, Hybrid Hosting, Email and Apps.

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Businesses Would Love To Never Have To Buy Another Server Again

Rackspace Hosting, the world’s leader in hosting and cloud computing, has announced the results of its latest survey, which highlights the growing problem of businesses struggling to cope with the demands of managing their own servers. More than half of the businesses surveyed responded that they would ‘love to never have to buy another server again.’

Rackspace’s online survey research was conducted in September 2009 and involved 441 US and UK-based IT decision-makers at companies with 100-500 employees

The research underscores Rackspace’s recent launch of No More Servers, a campaign and community dedicated to a new way of buying IT which includes managed hosting, cloud computing and email hosting. The new service has been created to help free businesses from the hassle of in-house server management and to enable them to instead shift their focus onto mission critical applications, core competencies and innovation. Rackspace is augmenting this initiative with Rackspace.co.uk/NoMoreServers, a location for companies to learn the benefits of hosting services.

The study, conducted by LoudHouse on behalf of Rackspace, investigated the views of more than 441 IT managers at mid-size enterprises and revealed that approximately one third of their IT staff’s time is spent on server management, which is liable to limit their ability to focus on strategic initiatives that could benefit the business. Fifty eight percent of respondents cited the ‘hassle of managing servers’ as a challenge for their organization, while 61% of IT managers said ‘time to drive innovation’ was a challenge.

Additionally, on-site servers were seen to also cause ‘server stress’ for IT managers, who cited ‘the need to be available 24×7’, ‘hardware issues and maintenance’, and ‘after-hours calls and issues’ as the top three server management issues. The survey also found that 51% of respondents have made mistakes in their server capacity planning. Fifteen percent have bought too many servers and 36% have failed to buy enough. This leaves businesses exposed to the risks of financial waste and the inability to cope with user demand by not getting server spending right the first time.

The survey also revealed that 35% of companies identify themselves as ‘proactive and slightly ahead of the curve’ when it comes to describing their approach to new technologies, while 28% remain ‘cautious and reactive.’ When it comes to hosting and cloud computing, barriers to adoption include assurances of reliability (29%), evidence of cost savings (28%) and assurances of security (27%).

“IT should be an enabler,” said Lanham Napier, president and chief executive officer of Rackspace Hosting. “The survey seems to reveal that a huge chunk of time and resources are spent keeping the lights on and preventing problems. Rackspace, with its world class Fanatical Support, can free organizations from the hassle of server management and enable their IT teams to focus on strategic initiatives that will positively impact the business.”

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Report Says Small Firms Floored By Basic Web Errors

Streamline.net web hosting research finds the majority of consumers using SME websites in the past year experienced usability faults.

The Streamline.net study of 1700 consumers found that 83% faced faults including unfinished web pages, broken URLs and an out-dated design. A further survey of 450 UK firms revealed that whilst half consider their website to look ‘professional’, 1 in 3 owners admit that they are guilty of ‘neglecting’ their sites. There is also a worrying discrepancy between where consumers wish to find web addresses, and where companies are displaying them. For example, 48% of firms still do not make any efforts to optimise their URL on search engines. Whilst 1 in 5 consumers took a web address from the side of a small company’s vehicle, only 10% of small firms currently display theirs in this way.

The data from Streamline.net showed that many SMEs are alienating web users through simple web errors. 76% of consumers have now used the website of a small business. Whilst 47% of consumers consider their experiences of such sites to be overall ‘good’, a further 1 in 4 Britons conclude such websites to be ‘barely usable’. In the past year, 83% of online consumers found faults on more than one occasion. Web errors reported included unfinished web pages (54%), broken URLs (52%), outdated email addresses (50%), and missing contact details (31%).

Top design gripe with SME websites is an outdated website design, faced by one third of users in the past year. 1 in 5 online consumers have encountered superfluous descriptions of products and services. 20% have been confused by the use of generic corporate images that bear no relation to specific company’s.

The findings are in contrast to another survey of 450 small firms where 76% felt confident that the language on their website could in no way be perceived negatively, and 84% saw the images on their website as fit for purpose.

Steve Holford, Marketing Director at Streamline.net, said, “As with many areas of business, if the basics of a website are not sound, customers will be deterred from purchasing”.

Almost half of companies (48%) made no attempt at optimise their position on search engines, when 77% of consumers call upon these. Many enterprises are prioritising the display of their URL in places unpopular with online consumers. 43% of companies publish their web address on industry websites whilst only 15% of consumers use this source. Remarkably, only 9% display their web address on signage or windows of their premises, when 1 in 5 Britons have made use of a domain name taken from here in the past year.

Holford added, “Every opportunity to capture online custom must be seized upon, which means promoting a web address in every possible environment – online and off-line”.

Streamline.net provides a comprehensive range of domain registrations. Users can even try free web hosting for 3 months with Streamline.net.

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Technology Adoption Fuels Recovery Tipping Point For UK SMEs

According to research from BT Business, supported by the Design Council and Prince’s Trust, small businesses at the forefront of technology adoption have been the least impacted by the recession, with those most reluctant to bring in new technology suffering the most. Companies with a positive attitude to technology adoption had a 69% better than average experience of the recession, whereas technology laggards suffered a 34% worse recession experience than the average.

The survey was conducted by Vanson Bourne on behalf of BT Business and included responses from more than 7,200 small businesses across the UK.

The 2009 Business Pulse report is the UK’s largest survey of SMEs this year. The survey shows widespread recognition of the importance of technology in reducing costs and increasing efficiency and competitiveness. 30% of businesses said that they have saved money through using technology, 32% use technology to network and obtain advice and 28% have found more customers through its use. Nearly one in five cited the use of technology to support flexible working as having one of the most significant impacts on how they have managed the recession.

The Business Pulse survey identified the positive steps firms have taken to manage the downturn. Nearly twice as many technology innovators have seen an increase in turnover of 10+% compared to those small businesses reluctant to embrace new technology, the majority of which have seen their turnover decrease since the recession began.

Mick Hegarty, strategy director, BT Business said: “The small business community has fought bravely to survive the downturn. Our findings show that many small businesses believe we are now at a tipping point with a recovery almost upon us. We can also see that now more than ever technology has a critical role to play in the future success of these businesses, helping them to find new customers, market themselves more effectively and reduce costs. Investing in better technology is emerging as a measure of success in the future for many businesses.”

In terms of the technologies having the biggest impact, 61% said faster broadband speeds have had a positive impact on their business. Better web sites, better e-commerce and mobile devices were also particularly beneficial. More than 1 in 10 small businesses are looking for more advice and support on using technology to manage their business.

Smaller organisations are also increasingly turning to social media to improve the way they operate with one in five respondents turning to support forums, Twitter and blogs to market their business and attract and retain customers.

Lord Digby Jones, said, “The Business Pulse highlights that optimism is on the rise. Equipping firms with the right technology and support will help tip the economy from recession onto the road to recovery in 2010.”

Full findings of the Business Pulse will be revealed in Small Business Week 2009 and debated by a business leadership panel including business experts Peter Jones and Lord Digby Jones at the launch.

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Fasthosts and Microsoft launch WebsiteSpark

Fasthosts Internet Ltd, a leading web hosting provider, has announced its work with Microsoft to promote the new Microsoft WebsiteSpark program for web professionals. The initiative assists smaller web design and development companies in launching or growing their business by providing better access to the Microsoft web platform. The scheme delivers free Microsoft Server OS, free licenses for Microsoft Expression and Visual Studio software, as well as training and access to MSDN newsgroups.

Eligible Fasthosts customers can save over £240 a year in server licensing costs as well as valuable software licences direct from Microsoft. The scheme is an example of how businesses can gain significantly from discussing their technical requirements and business needs with Fasthosts. Fasthosts has been selected by Microsoft to promote the program benefits and guide eligible Windows Server customers through enrolment.

The Microsoft WebsiteSpark program offers new support for web design and development agencies with up to 10 employees. Eligible Fasthosts customers gain an immediate financial benefit – saving £240 per year with a free Windows Server license and saving even more with a free MSSQL license. Upon enrolment, members gain access to free Windows Expression Studio 2 (1 user license), Expression Web 2 (2 user licenses), Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition (3 user licenses) and DotNetPanel control panel.

A great number of professionals and enterprises can achieve cost savings by discussing their server and software needs with a long-standing expert like Fasthosts. The company’s advisers are trained to identify and leverage the efficiencies that hosted technologies can deliver. By working-through requirements with Fasthosts, synergies between software and hardware can often be identified.

Steve Holford, CMO Fasthosts Internet Ltd., said: “WebsiteSpark is an excellent opportunity for smaller web agencies. It delivers exactly what they need most – free tools and practical help. As hosting partner to thousands of web pros, Fasthosts is well qualified to advise participants on how to apply Windows hardware and development tools to best effect.”

Simon Pryce, Director of Skylight Media, is a Fasthosts customer who enrolled in the WebsiteSpark program to help boost the web design side of the business. Pryce commented: “We had discovered WebsiteSpark through our business network, and our successful enrolment in the scheme led to us setting up additional dedicated servers with Fasthosts at the same time. The WebsiteSpark scheme is an ideal way for us to update our use of Windows Server technology, enabling us to save a significant sum of money on license fees. We were also delighted to find during our consultation with the ever-reliable Fasthosts, that these new server resources will save us money too, so we’re very pleased all round.”

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NoMoreServers.com, a site dedicated to the emergence of Computing-as-a-Service models

Rackspace Hosting (NYSE:RAX) has announced the launch of NoMoreServers.com, a site dedicated to the emergence of Computing-as-a-Service models (like hosting, cloud computing and SaaS) to power corporate computing.

To support this campaign, the hosting company has hired renowned hosting industry strategist Andrew Schroepfer. In his role, Schroepfer will cover the trend in depth from how providers are evolving to how real businesses are making this trend pay off.

“A new way to run business computing is emerging,” said Lanham Napier, president and CEO of Rackspace. “We have countless business customers tell us they are finished buying servers and are looking for a computing partner. People don’t want to buy standalone computing, they want computing as a service with Fanatical Support. This trend will have major implications on the entire IT industry, and there is no one more qualified to cover it day-to-day than Andy.”

NoMoreServers.com will feature daily and unique commentary explaining the next era in computing. In addition to filtering and reviewing interesting developments and third-party content about the NoMoreServers computing era, the site will feature daily commentary and a live community portal for visitors to engage on the topic and offers a white paper on the subject for community members.

Schroepfer has been a key analyst in the hosting industry since its inception in the late 1990s. From his beginnings at Piper Jaffray where he developed and managed the VoIP (Voice-over-Internet-Protocol) industry’s primary market statistics, Schroepfer published a 270-page report on the dis-aggregation of communications which sparked his coverage of the Web hosting industry. He then joined Goldman Sachs as VP and senior equity analyst on the Internet Infrastructure Services industry during the time when Equinix, Loudcloud (now HP), and Webex (now Cisco) were executing their IPOs (Initial Public Offerings). In late 2000, Schroepfer founded, led, and later sold Tier1 Research, the leading specialist research firm on the hosting and data centre industry whose insights and data remain highly relevant.

“Having covered the hosting industry since its inception, and having strongly recommended Rackspace since 2001, I am excited to now become a Racker,” said Andy Schroepfer. “I have always said Rackspace will be more than just a leader in hosting, and I am honoured to join the 2,700-strong Fanatical Support team tasked with sustaining and evolving our leadership role as the IT value chain is recast.”

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