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You
are here -> Managed
Hosting
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| Founded
(Year) |
1998 |
| Headquarters |
San
Antonio, Texas |
| Leadership |
Graham
Weston, CEO |
| Employees
|
185 |
Strength
Fanatical customer support and service; fast up-time; knowledgeable
technical staff; flexibility and scalability;
dependability (guarantee of consistent Web site up-time and
solid financial stability).
Main Customers
Ironman
Triathlon, Columbia House, Linux® Journal, eCrush, Metadot,
Crew Marketing, Comstock Data Mining (hosts sites for
Universal Studios television shows), BizBuySell |
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Company
Description
San Antonio-based Rackspace Managed Hosting hosts more
than 5,000 dedicated servers for small & medium-sized
businesses as well as large enterprise customers. Rackspace
is unique within the hosting arena because their business
model allows customers to order servers online, guaranteed
to be up and running in 24 hours, no matter the size and
complexity of the order. Rackspace also practices fanatical
customer service, providing 24-hour tech support to its
customers.
While the small players in the industry are starting to go
out of business, Rackspace has stuck to traditional business
principles and has been profitable for the last year.
Rackspace has also kept its model low cost (no direct sales
force, easy targeting, etc.) and avoided low margin
businesses (virtual hosting and web design). And perhaps
most importantly: they kept it simple: gave customers what
they need and avoided a large footprint: Rackspace runs one
main data center with a strong satellite in Europe -- they
didn't build multiple fancy data centers with bullet proof
Windows® and mantraps like other players. In doing so,
they've mastered a key differentiator: fanatical support.
This has led to low cost acquisition (50% of new business
from referral) and minimal churn rates.
Rackspace provides its customers with full-service managed
hosting solutions, including state-of-the-art data centers,
customized servers, burstable connectivity, server software
and fanatical support of all hardware and core software.
With Rackspace's SmoothScaling capabilities, e-businesses
can add bandwidth, advanced services, or server capacity on
demand. Monthly fees range from $300 to $50,000 per month,
depending on the complexity required. Founded in 1998, with
locations in Texas and London, the company manages thousands
of servers for customers in more than 60 countries.
Rackspace was the only managed hosting company to make it to
the
Computerworld Top 100 Emerging Companies to Watch in 2002. |
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Company
and website's objectives
Our
goal is to deliver the most reliable and secure hosting
platform for complex Web operations. We support
our operations by a superior customer support experience. |
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Briefly
describe a few top-notch hosting features that RackSpace is
providing for its clients.
Fanatical support starts with the quote process.
Regardless of complexity, we deliver quotes within an hour
of request. We then provision and deploy the platform
faster than anyone in the industry (24 hours for basic one
server deployments, 72 hours max for clusters with advanced
networking, security and other upstream services).
Once deployed, our fanatical support delivers
certified techs instantly accessible 24x7. This is why
we get 50% of our customers from referral.
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How
does RackSpace effectively choose and recruit partners that
will help expand RackSpace's business?
We
look for true partners that are willing to invest in the
relationship and put skin in the game. Without buy in
on both sides these partnerships are not successful. |
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Could
you tell us something about the background and expertise of
a couple of senior people in RackSpace?
Richard Yoo, Chief Technology Officer, and Dirk Elmendorf,
Chief Technology Evangelist, are two of the company's
founders. They started the business as Trinity University
students and soon secured angel funding. Years later, their
efforts as company executives have helped grow Rackspace
into one of the leading managed hosting companies in the
world.
Dirk's expertise is
in PostgreSQL, PHP, code development, software and
development, database administration, system administration.
Richard's expertise is primarily in networking, hardware,
hardware and software interaction, algorithm design, and
finding holes/problems in processes.
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How
does RackSpace differ from other hosting providers in your
area?
Rackspace differs from other hosting providers in its
customer service. Customers can call at any time of day or
night and get someone live on the phone who is knowledgeable
about their particular account. Rackspace has technical
expertise in a number of areas that are valuable to its
customers - for example they are experts in both Microsoft®
and Open Source OS. Rackspace also stands out from its
competitors with its financial stability. While most hosters
are going bankrupt or being acquired, Rackspace has made business decisions that have led to its profitability
and stability. |
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What
are the factors that you think will ultimately compel a
customer to sign up your hosting services? What do you offer
your customers that they might not find elsewhere?
Fanatical support. See above. It pervades the
entire Rackspace experience from sales to technical support.
Additionally , we offer our customers the flexibility to
scale their configurations up or down as their requirements
change. Month-to-month contracts require us to
win our customers' business back month after month, by
making sure we offer them the best customer experience in
the industry. |
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What
are your short and long term goals for RackSpace?
Focusing on the customer is our number one goal. We
want to continually improve the experience making our
customers web operations run flawlessly. If we take
care of the customer, our long term goal of leading the
market for complex hosting services will take care of itself. |
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*Information and answers
provided by the company
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View Company Details |
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