A Hosting Guide

Rackspace Expands Fanatical Support, Brings its Legendary Service Levels to the Cloud

Managed Cloud provides businesses with proactive monitoring, troubleshooting, and advice on how to best leverage cloud computing

SAN ANTONIO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Rackspace® Hosting (NYSE: RAX), the world’s leading specialist in the hosting and cloud computing industry, today defined a new category in hosting: managed cloud. The first managed cloud offering is Cloud Servers with a managed service level, providing businesses with proactive monitoring, troubleshooting and guidance on how to leverage cloud computing. Rackspace is expanding its famous Fanatical Support® into the cloud, by marrying its industry-leading 24x7x365 managed service level with its highly scalable on-demand Cloud Servers offering. With this support, companies can spend less time worrying about infrastructure and more time focusing on their core business.

The service offering is ideal for companies that want to transition to a cloud environment for on-demand availability, flexibility and scalability, but lack internal cloud expertise. In addition to the 24x7x365 core service level already provided on the Rackspace Cloud, managed cloud will use dedicated teams to provide OS Support and Application Level Support, as well as guidance on how to leverage the cloud. Dozens of companies participated in Rackspace’s Beta program and have seen the benefits that the managed cloud offering has to offer.

"We manage the marketing, athlete tracking and live event coverage of each Ironman race, and have fluctuating business needs throughout the year," said Travis Sitzlar, Chief Technologist, World Triathlon Corp., organizer of the world-renowned Ironman races, and a beta customer. "Managed cloud is ideal for us because we have traffic peaks during race times and significantly less demand when there are fewer events occurring. The cloud environment is perfect for us, as we can take advantage of scaling up and down throughout the year, but we could not do it without the support from Rackspace. The managed service is critical to us because Rackspace provides us with the professional insight on how to best use the cloud environment while also helping to ensure that issues are proactively resolved, so we can focus on producing the best Ironman events."

With a choice of support options, customers can select the approach that best meets their needs. Managed cloud provides a suite of features supported by the industry’s leading Service Level Agreement (SLA), including:

* 24x7x365 rapid response to monitoring alerts that are sent to customers and the Rackspace support team. If customers choose, Rackspace can be authorized to troubleshoot problems before customers even know about it.
* Key Operating system and application infrastructure support, including updates and patches to the following operating systems: MS Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise 64-bit, Ubuntu 10.4, (Lucid Lynx), Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4, CentOS 5.5. Key applications supported include Apache, MySQL, PHP; .Net/IIS; Microsoft SQL Server Standard Edition 2008 R2.
* Technical guidance. Managed cloud can help customers plan for future growth and maximize their current cloud environment.
* Admin Level Access to cloud servers is provided so customers can maintain full control at all times. In addition, Rackspace will also maintain access so our support teams can troubleshoot and resolve issues in real time.
* Anytime, anywhere accessibility. Customers can reach their support team via phone call, chat, or e-mail, and can submit service tickets. Rackspace will proactively work on issues based on alerts and can also support customers who are trying to resolve their own issues with the built-in management tools. Rackspace also maintains responsibility for network and hardware uptime.

“Today Rackspace is defining a new category of hosting – managed cloud - much as we did a decade ago when we led the way in managed hosting,” said Pat Matthews, senior vice president of cloud at Rackspace. “Although the first era of the cloud was for developers and early adopters, now the rest of the world wants to use this incredible technology, and Rackspace is making this possible. Many businesses want the help and expertise to make cloud computing work for them. We listened to our customers and now provide unmatched service in the cloud so companies can focus on what they know best — their core business — while Rackspace takes care of the rest.”

About Rackspace Hosting
Rackspace Hosting is the world's leading specialist in the hosting and cloud computing industry, and a founder of OpenStack, an open source cloud platform. The San Antonio-based company provides Fanatical Support® to its customers, across a portfolio of IT services, including Managed Hosting and Cloud Computing. For more information, visit www.rackspace.com.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of Rackspace Hosting could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including any statements concerning expected development, performance or market acceptance associated with our Managed Cloud products and services, including Cloud Servers with a managed service level; anticipated operational and financial benefits from our Managed Cloud products and services, including Cloud Servers with a managed service level; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include including the possibility that expected benefits from Cloud Servers for Windows may not materialize because this product is not generally accepted in the marketplace, which could occur due to certain factors including (i) a failure to market the product cost effectively, differentiate the product from competitive products or communicate differentiations effectively, (ii) the reliability, quality or compatibility associated with the product, (iii) changes in technology which adversely affect the product’s benefit, (iv) slowdowns in the general economy or technology industry that impact consumer spending habits, (v) internal strategy decisions that impact the product, and (vi) (v) other risks that are described in Rackspace Hosting's Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2010, filed with the SEC on November 9, 2010. Except as required by law, Rackspace Hosting assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements publicly, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future.

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Contacts
Rackspace Hosting
Melissa Smolensky, 512-423-3382
melissa.swolensky@rackspace.com