The origins of Rackspace Hosting go back to 1996 when Dirk Elmehof and Pat Condon started a company providing mainly web-based applications. In 1998 the business was named Rackspace, and it moved from mainly providing applications to offering hosting solutions. Rackspace is publicly traded and listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Company and Services
Rackspace has a wide customer base serving many thousands of small business as well as large corporations. The company is based in San Antonio, Texas (some 200 miles west of Houston). It also has overseas offices in London and Hong Kong.
Since 1998 Rackspace has concentrated on providing dedicated hosting and has built up an impressive brand reputation. Rackspace claims to have grown at least by 50% each year since it began and today is a world leading provider of dedicated server hosting.
Dedicated hosting is offered for both Linux and Windows platforms, and can be managed or intensive (the latter being where the customer manages the servers for themselves). Rackspace guarantees 100% network uptime. This commitment to “zero-downtime” is made possible, it claims, with advanced backup technology whereby if one network or provider fails, Rackspace will immediately scan for a replacement. The end result is designed to be no loss of uptime and a continual service to its customers. Rackspace promises to only use high quality bandwidth providers, underlining its stated intent to provide a high quality, reliable service without fail.
Excellent customer support is another key element of Rackspace’s web hosting offering and is backed up in part by a 2,000 strong workforce, many of which work on the customer care side of the business. Its “Fanatical Support” program includes offering support 24/7 x 365 care by highly trained operatives. In addition, Rackspace is known for achieving faster than average response times to customers’ queries, with unlimited technical support on the phone. Customers also have access to a large knowledge base on Rackspace’s website.
The success of Rackspace has seen it grow to a multi-million dollar international company over the past decade, and many accolades have come along the way, including being selected for ‘Best Place to Work’ awards in both the US and the UK.
Rackspace is one of an increasing number of hosting companies that promote themselves as environmentally aware. A such, it has established tree planting schemes throughout the US and the UK and it also provides the option of carbon-neutral web hosting.
Server Location
Rackspace has several data centers around the world. In the UK it has data facilities in London and Slough. A data center in Hong Kong was opened in September 2008. Finally it has four North American data centers: two in San Antonio, Texas, one in Dallas, Texas and one in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Related Links
Company blog: http://www.rackspace.com/blog/index.php
Resource center: http://www.rackspace.com/information/mediacenter/index.php
Interview with CMO – http://www.hostindex.com/interviews/Rackspace_Interview.shtm
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