RackSpace company

Rackspace Hosting Launches Enhanced Partner Network (December 10, 2009) - Company's four-tiered program delivers partner companies greater opportunity for revenue, training and marketing tools.

Rackspace Hosting, a web hosting company, yesterday announced that it has restructured its global Rackspace Partner Network to help partner companies grow their business, better serve customers and realize a competitive advantage. The company says that it 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. It explains that to add more structure and clarity to the program, it created four levels of commitment based on company size and level of sales: Platinum, Gold, Silver and Member. Additionally, it 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.

The company states that its 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

It avers that as companies move along the continuum from Member Partnership to Platinum Partnership, it 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

"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."

"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."

Rackspace Hosting Partners with VeriSign (November 23, 2009) - Partnership enables the company to directly sell, install and renew VeriSign SSL Certificates to its customers.

Rackspace Hosting, a web hosting company, today announced that it is extending the protection it offers to its customers by offering the full line of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificates from VeriSign, Inc., a provider of internet infrastructure services.

The company states that under terms of a recently expanded agreement with VeriSign, it now can directly sell, install and renew VeriSign SSL Certificates to its customers. Additionally, the entire line of VeriSign SSL Certificates is now available as a self-service option via the MyRackspace.com customer portal. It further states that in addition to standard SSL protection, it offers VeriSign Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificates. EV SSL Certificates offer a proven safeguard against phishing scams that lure unsuspecting consumers to sites that can appear almost identical to genuine web pages.

The company explains that identity thieves use these fraudulent pages to capture credit card numbers, passwords and other valuable personal information. When visiting sites protected by VeriSign EV SSL, internet users using browsers that support EV see a green address bar. The green bar tells consumers they have reached a web site whose authenticity has been certified by VeriSign. An EV SSL Certificate triggers visual cues beyond the green address bar, including a new field that contains the name of the organization that owns the site and in some cases the name of the security provider that issued the certificate. The company avers that when purchased through it, VeriSign SSL Certificates come backed by its Fanatical Support. It not only sells VeriSign SSL Certificates, but also manages the entire process of ordering, installing and renewing certificates, making it easy for its clients to build trust with their own online users and customers.

"Rackspace has long been known as a one-stop shop for organizations looking to launch Web sites and online applications that offer flexibility, scalability, reliability, and security," said John Engates, CTO at Rackspace Hosting. "Our relationship with VeriSign helps us bring one of the most trusted brands on the Web to thousands of customers."

"Trust is the most valuable currency on the Internet today, and trust is what VeriSign SSL and EV SSL protection delivers for Web site operators the world over," said Michael Lin, Vice President and General Manager of SSL at VeriSign. "By building strong and lasting bonds of trust between consumers and the sites they visit, VeriSign SSL and EV SSL protection helps maximize revenues for Rackspace's hosting customers. We're delighted to expand our relationship with Rackspace."

Rackspace Releases Carbon Calculator (February 25, 2009) - Offering a new way to help businesses assess and reduce their environmental impact, "computing-as-a-service" provider Rackspace Hosting (www.rackspace.com) has announced a free "carbon calculator" tool that estimates an organization's total carbon footprint by having the business fill out a survey on their business practices, giving them input on how they can run more environmentally friendly businesses.

As part of its continuation of efforts to promote environmentally friendly programs, last week, Rackspace launched its Carbon Calculator, developed by NativeEnergy, a leading international provider of high quality carbon offsets and emission reductions. This is the latest environmental commitment for the company since it began its green initiative, Greenspace, in 2007.

Rackspace Hosting chief technology officer John Engates said the Carbon Calculator is a good representation of the company's "green" initiatives.

"We've done a lot of things internally to strive toward greener IT, and what this tool does is really help us take some of the things that we've learned and some of the work that we're doing... and lets [others] participate and understand their impact and make changes based on the feedback this tool gives them."



The Carbon Calculator essentially asks a company questions about the size of its office space, how many employees work there, how much travel do they do, and so on. These factors are inputted into a formula that calculates how many carbon offsets the company needs to buy to be carbon neutral.

"It's publicly available on our website and not restricted to customers. I think for non-customers, I think it's really trying to demonstrate our commitment to green energy and green hosting and show customers what we're thinking about, so it's an outward sign of the work going on inside - sometimes that's hard to see for customers and I think demonstrating your commitment by putting these tools in the hands of potential customers as one way of demonstrating that."

Through this new tool, companies can also access Rackspace's online Greenspace resources to learn more about climate change and effective steps they can take to reduce their carbon impact, like reducing wasteful packaging practices using energy efficient hardware, and by purchasing carbon offsets from NativeEnergy, which fund projects that try to reduce man's impact on climate change.

"Many companies want to do more to reduce their potential negative impact on the planet," NativeEnergy president and chief executive officer Tom Boucher said. "Rackspace is not only leading the way, the company is engaging its customers to support real and effective solutions that can help businesses reduce their environmental impacts and achieve corporate goals."

A longtime proponent of the Green movement, Rackspace also practices what it preaches. The company makes a conscious effort to decrease its customers' carbon footprint as well as its own. Rackspace designs all data centers with power conservation in mind and also operates one facility on renewable energy. The company is also working on getting its corporate headquarters to qualify for Leadership in Enery and Environmental Design certification, a sustainable building rating system developed by the US Green Building Council.