This week we’re excited to be running our Racker wellness week to get our whole team focused on wholesome eating, sports activities and healthy lifestyle habits.

It’s no secret that we all need to be healthy and happy on the inside if we are going to perform well on the outside. So given our goal to constantly deliver (Fanatical) support to our customers every day, we want to ensure our Rackers feel healthy and engaged when they come into work.

As much as Rackspace is about hosting and cloud computing resources, it’s the Human Resources that grow with us that make this company what it really is. So this week we’ll be keeping our personal disk drives humming with a variety of activities such as rowing competitions, free healthy-option breakfasts, work-life balance workshops and also top exercise tips.

The wellness week initiative is the kind of activity that has seen Rackspace recognised as an employee-focused company determined to create a really great 21st Century working environment for our team — and yes, we do call them our “family”.

Just yesterday FORTUNE magazine ranked us number 74 on its annual list of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” in the world. We believe Rackers can only provide Fanatical Support to our customers if they are happy and healthy themselves. What are you doing to keep your colleagues and employees healthy? Post your comments!

Exchange Server is “server-side” technology for email, calendaring, contacts and ‘task’ services, so it’s perfectly suited to the cloud model in many ways. Here are our five principles of cloud-powered Exchange; these are the home truths that should help us realise that what happens in the cloud, should stay in the cloud.

1. Innovate and differentiate

Why invest time, money, skills, resources, maintenance budget (yes, we could go on) on managing an Exchange server (that can operate with minimal disruptions), when you are in business delivering fresh fish, proving tourism services or some other line of vertical? Spend your time on innovating and differentiating and building a growth strategy. At the same time, put your Exchange communications needs in the cloud and keep your hands clean.

2. Riding Annual Demand Cycles

Cloud computing allows you to pay for what you need, not for how what you might need. This is a big benefit for businesses wasting money on unused server or storage capacity or capacity that is only used during peak usage times. If your business is seasonally affected and/or impacted by annual demand cycles caused by market economics or your own roadmap, then this is a route to higher profitability.

3. Move Away From The Office Desk

Business has gone mobile as we know and is not strictly conducted at the traditional desk anymore — and neither is Hosted Exchange. Users need real-time access on the desktop, browser and any mobile device. Hosted Exchange is a familiar way to get that luxury with all of a user’s data: email, calendar, contacts and tasks – without setting up complex mobile infrastructure.

4. Exchange With Outlook – Not Rocket Science

Most professionals have used Outlook at some point in their careers and are comfortable with how it works — this means that generally speaking, everyone can get up to speed with Exchange quickly with fewer disruptions and there is little or no training needed.

5. Deploy Inboxes in Minutes

One of the beauties of any hosted service, like Exchange, is having a standard service applied across many users. This means little or no customisation is needed, reduced costs and quicker ramp up is seen across the board. Added to this, if businesses sign up to Rackspace Email and Apps, they’ll receive free migration.

To find out more about Exchange powered by Rackspace click here: http://www.rackspace.co.uk/email-apps/email-hosting/microsoft-exchange/

OK so you already know that we’ve been helping customers define their hosting needs for some years now.

But as customers adopt more service based computing resources like cloud hosting, it’s only logical that they will also now ask more of their hosting provider to ensure they are getting the correct solution.

So we thought hey, let’s produce an infographic to take customers through a simple decision making process on a route to the solution that’s right for them.

It’s clear clean and enjoyably easy to read, we think it works really well – if you agree with us then please share it with your friends!

Share this with your friends!
Copy the code below to add this to your own site.

<a style="border: none;" title="Rackspace Hosting - What type of site do you want to host?" href="http://blog.rackspace.co.uk/rackspace-news/hosting-decisions-from-the-chalkboard-infographic/"><img src="http://blog.rackspace.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/hosting-type-guide-v2.jpg" alt="Rackspace Hosting - What type of site do you want to host?" /></a>
Infographic by <a title="Rackspace Hosting" href="http://www.rackspace.co.uk">Rackspace Hosting</a>

Our CTO, John Engates, recently spoke about how 2012 is going to be a real crunch year for cloud computing.

As we now look to more refined and attuned levels of cloud adoption and deployment across every industry vertical, John shares his vision for the cloud in 2012 and beyond; here is it in bite-sized portions.

1. Must have SaaS

   If you think about Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and what is changing right now, you can see that enterprise software vendors of all types are starting to panic if they find that they don’t have a SaaS delivery mechanism in place. This means that they will now move to try and acquire other companies who can help bring a service-layer element to their business – and let’s be honest, panic buying of any kind is rarely prudent.

   As vendors realise that they must have these SaaS layers in place, a less than natural consumption and acquisition process may result. This could lead to a more fragmented level of overall service offerings being delivered, compared that is to what might have evolved more organically. Put simply, the road ahead could be a little bumpy for a while.

2. It’s Time To Get Real

   Now is the time that we’re going to witness real enterprise adoption of the cloud. We are still working through the so-called ‘global economic slowdown’, where customers have turned to cloud for cost savings. But as we begin to emerge from the slowdown, these same customers and others will start to reap extended benefits from cloud computing to go faster and compute more profitably. In other words, people have learned from these recessionary times and, as things improve, will be able to use that knowledge for further competitive advantage.

   Allied to this point is the feedback we have heard from customers regarding security in the cloud vs dedicated environments – as well as the compliance and performance issues that are also raised here. A lot of these shortcomings (if indeed they are real objections) are now being properly addressed by those of us in the cloud computing industry – bringing the reality of the cloud home and making it real.

3. Hybrid Is Here

   We’ll see more and more production environments going live with hybrid clouds as this area has already proven very popular in terms of real adoption this year. Hybrid means you can mix and match different form factors and even different types of cloud. It also of course means that customers are able to keep their most mission-critical sensitive data in private cloud data centres and utilise the public cloud to its best advantage for flexibility and cost saving.

4. Mobile Cloud Devices

   Another big driver for cloud computing demand in 2012 will be mobile and tablet usage, as consumers seem to want to consume everything in devices of this size. These devices rely on a constant connection to the cloud via the web so that it is impossible to deliver the consumer experience expected here without embracing the cloud. These units may as well be classed as cloud devices!

5. Open Source Honesty

   Open source will also have a huge impact on the future of the cloud, and specifically here we are talking about OpenStack in terms of the way future cloud infrastructures will be laid down. Cloud computing is still so new and nascent in many senses that an adherence to open standards is really the only way we should progress. To use a more traditional enterprise software approach to the cloud (instead) would be almost counter-intuitive in terms of a sensible way forward.

Continuing our tradition of fabulous interactive Christmas cards, this year we put our skills to the test with a Rackspace Christmas dance off. With its own dedicated web site, this year’s holiday celebrations will be funkier than ever as you pick from ten Rackers to pitch one against the other and see them lay down their moves.

Don’t like someone’s cloud-powered cavorting and gyrations? No problem — just drag a new Racker to the floor and watch your previous dancer drop down a trap door away from all the fun.

Built using Adobe Flash and filmed in glorious Rack-o-Vision using the latest “green screen” filming techniques, this is a serious cool piece of yuletide merry-making.

Want to turn up the volume and really party? Still no problem — just hit the “Rack Attack” button and watch the whole team get ignited by dance fever as they rock out for all they are worth!

If you really want the inside scoop on the dance off itself, watch the ‘making of’ film and enjoy the X-Factor style interviews and off camera warm ups with the contestants.

You can vote for your favourite Racker directly from the Dance Off site itself, competition is already hotting up so be sure to get your vote in as soon as possible and see if your favourite groovy is currently showing on the top three leaderboard.

Help spread the word! Please forward the link to the card to all your friends and family and use Twitter and Facebook to tell people that you have voted by using the social media buttons on the page.

If you are posting it on Facebook or Twitter without using the social media buttons on the dance off page, please use http://bit.ly/uidsnH to link to the page and if using hash tags, use #RSchristmascard

Happy Voting!

Ria

Today we are holding the Rackspace Enterprise Winter Warmer, a close gathering of our biggest European customers. As well as all the customers coming to this forum in the City of London, we have a number of special guests speaking … Robert Scoble (Tech guru and Twitterer extraordinaire @scobleizer) is making an appearance on UK soil and giving his update on the next generation of ground breaking technologies. John Engates (Rackspace CTO) is presenting on Rackspace strategy and what’s coming up in 2012. Nigel Beighton (VP Technology, EMEA) is speaking about OpenStack and how to build it in to your IT vision. Finally and by no means least, Colin Rees (CIO EMEA) at Domino’s Pizza is sharing the latest on their IT outsourcing strategy and the many benefits it brings.

After all that, a bit of relaxation is in order… networking drinks and dinner. A chance for our customers to get to know other customers, and to spend some time with their Rackspace account and support teams. Promises to be a great day! Check out the registration site for further details on our Winter Warmer

Keep up-to-date on the day’s proceedings by following our hash tag #rackwinterwarmer