Rackspace is getting super practical this month with some OpenStack community engagement to really give our software application development community a helping hand. Last month, our OpenStack partners announced a new collaboration to build TryStack, a free sandbox for those programmers (and users too) in exploring and testing the open source cloud operating system.

TryStack is designed to help support the testing of software that communicates over OpenStack APIs, but (and here’s the cool part) it all works without a user having to set up and administer their own deployment.

Users will get a cloud “instance” lasts up to 24 hours, at which point resources for the instances are reclaimed and made available to other TryStack users – we think that’s the fairest way to do this and the community seems to agree. Each registered user will receive a set amount of Stack Dollars they can use to “lease” instances within that time period.

“As an OpenStack contributor, I am happy to see TryStack available for those looking for a starting point to explore OpenStack’s ecosystem of distributions and products,” said Jesse Andrews, director of development for Rackspace Cloud Builders. “TryStack provides a simple way to get some hands-on experience with OpenStack.”

TryStack is intended to provide users with the ability to launch instances in one of several TryStack zones, representing different OpenStack reference architectures and geographical locations.

We’re confident that TryStack is going to help the wider adoption of cloud computing as it’s a great way for programmers to proactively identify any problems with packaging and deployment of their cloud apps. It’s great for end users too as they will get experience administering an OpenStack cloud on a variety of heterogeneous hypervisors and network topologies.

It’s a win for developers, a win for users, a win for OpenStack, a win for Rackspace and a win for the cloud — what’s not to like?

We’re thrilled to announce that Rackspace Hosting has been recognized as a market leader in Gartner’s 2011 Magic Quadrant For Managed Hosting, which encompasses both physical and virtualized infrastructures, including cloud infrastructure-as-a-service.

We are working to build the service leader in cloud computing, and we believe this recognition from Gartner confirms that Fanatical Support really does deliver incredible outcomes to our customers.

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant has become one of the most influential research reports upon which IT buyers use for their evaluations and purchases. Gartner evaluates each provider for completeness of vision and ability to execute, and then places providers into four distinct categories: Niche Players, Challengers, Visionaries and Leaders. Rackspace is honored to be named in the Leaders Quadrant for Managed Hosting.

Landing in the Leader Quadrant is no small feat. It took a massive amount of work and dedication from our Rackers to earn the leadership designation from Gartner, and we’re pleased to share this news with our customers and company. Our success is fueled by Rackers volunteering their best work to deliver Fanatical Support to our customers.

In 2011, Rackspace made several major advancements in its product and services portfolio to better serve our SMB and Enterprise customers, and we plan on making even more important advances in 2012.

Last year we also saw the launch of Rackspace Cloud Builders, which provides consultative work around OpenStack, and the continued growth of Rackspace’s hybrid hosting offering, RackConnect; both of which helped vault Rackspace into the leadership segment. RackConnect offers the ability to bridge multiple environments – dedicated, public and private clouds – over a single virtual network while maintaining security.

We’re honored to be recognized as a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Managed Hosting.  We have very important work to do in 2012 as we invest in our culture and advance our products and services.  Some of the exciting work ahead of us includes increasing our product and service capability on OpenStack and investing in new tools that power Fanatical Support.

Lanham

Disclaimer

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Find out more about the Gartner’s 2011 Magic Quadrant For Managed Hosting

About the Author

This is a post written and contributed by Lanham Napier.
Lanham Napier is President and CEO of Rackspace and an unbridled enthusiast for creating the service culture that drives Rackspace’s “fanatical support” philosophy.

Napier has been recognized by Forbes as one of America’s 15 Most Powerful CEOs 40 And Under, and was named one of the Top 100 Most Influential Executives by Everything Channel’s CRN. Napier has also been honored by Ernst & Young as an entrepreneur of the year and is a member of the Young President’s Organization and Entrepreneur’s Organization.

Racker Manager of the Year

One of our new categories for 2012, and the winner of this prestigious award award is…

Ron Goddard!

There are many ingredients to make a great place to work, and an inspirational manager is one of the most important. We all perform best when led by the right example, are treated well, encouraged, praised and kept on the right track.

Sales Manager Ron Goddard swept the board with nominations not just from his team but from many other Rackers who were influenced by both his management style and motivational abilities. Ron is a wonderful ambassador for the business – a real tribal leader!

Take a look at this rather indicative comment:

“He is the nicest, most genuinely supportive person I have ever met. His ethics are infectious and his outlook on life and work are amazing. He’s a true inspiration to many and I couldn’t think of anyone else who deserves this more. His contribution has been second to none on both personal and work levels. My mother has even started asking after him – I think that says it all!”

Racker of the Year

An incredible honour for any Racker, this year’s winner was…

Joanna Swett!

Rackspace is full of special people, so to win this accolade you have to be off the scale. Joanna certainly meets that criteria. New to the UK, but a veteran US Racker of over 5 years; Joanna has made an enormous impact since joining the UK business, taking her team (almost) literally beyond the clouds!

Joanna keeps her team delivering beyond expectations, and in a way that inspires and engages. Her beaming smile is enough to cheer even the dullest Monday morning.

One of the many nominations she received:

“Joanna is a great manager and an asset to Rackspace. She lives breathes, sleeps, promotes the core values and has instilled them in every one of her team. Her team is a family, everyone is very close, and are fanatical to the core in helping customers and Rackers alike. She has immense passion for her work and is committed to greatness for every individual, her team and Rackspace alike.”

We’re at CeBIT in Hanover, Germany this week. It’s the digital industry’s biggest event with everything from exhibitions stands to conferences, keynotes, gadgets and, of course, the chance to meet up with everyone in the know!

Looking around the exhibition is like viewing a who’s who of the IT world, as well as being given a sneaky peek into the future. Rackers and visitors are falling in love with gadgets that allow us to stick our iPads to practically any surface (like the toilet wall!) and a computer mouse that you fix to your finger!

One of the biggest trends here this year though is Cloud Computing, which alongside Big Data, Mobility and Social Media is featured under the event’s overarching theme of ‘Managing Trust – Trust & Security in the digital world’. Rackspace is promoting our cloud services at the cloud plaza, together with other cloud service providers. We are also running daily survey for visitors where people can win a Magic Wand universal remote control. As you can see, we had one extremely happy winner today!

Dieuwke (Racker) with the winner at CeBIT!

We’re here all week on Stand D24 Hall 6. Come on by and allow us to show you the future of cloud computing!

Suzanne

The information technology industry has changed the way we work more than any other industry over the last couple of decades. But we’re not just talking about devices, productivity tools and wireless connectivity from anywhere; we’re also talking about quality of life for staff members, personal freedom, trust and blue jeans.

We like to think that we take all of those factors very seriously (including the option to wear jeans!) on a daily basis and perhaps that’s some of the reason why Rackspace was named a ‘best place to work’ in the UK for the seventh year running in the Sunday Times 100 Best Companies awards.

The honor was announced at an awards ceremony held at London’s Battersea Evolution hotel last week.

We asked you… and you told us what you think; a total of 83% of our Rackers said that they were extremely proud to work for the company; and 80% felt that they could make a valuable contribution to the firm’s wider market success.

Our Managing Director of International Taylor Rhodes spoke at the time of this award saying that every Racker is employed because of the skills and personality they bring that will help us achieve our vision ‘to become one of the world’s greatest service company’.

Rackspace is a firm that prides itself on the pedigree and engineering excellence of its hardware, its data centre and its service-based computing offering. But without our people and the care and dedication that they bring to our customers we would not be where we are today.

To be blunt, without the personal approach that drives our Fanatical Support proposition, we would just be a data centre with some smart technology lurking in the background. There is no service-based computing without personal service… and our Rackers understand that.

The Sunday Times employee poll saw a total of 79% of workers say that they were excited about where the company was going in the year ahead. Our staff clearly cares about the company; we hope its clear that we in turn care about our staff.

A total of 78% of the Rackers would describe their jobs as ‘good for their own personal growth’ and 80% say the experience they gain in the workplace is valuable for their future. We are investing in our employees and it seems that our employees are prepared to invest in us with commitment and hard work. It’s a virtuous circle for sure.

As intangible as cloud computing and virtualised hosted services can sometimes appear; Rackspace has taken an extremely human approach to employee welfare and this has directly channeled into a very real personality for the company as a whole.

Rackspace knows that our team make us who we are today, so we thank you all.

In July 2010, Rackspace made the bold move of making the code behind our highly successful Cloud Files product open source. The same code today is OpenStack Object Storage. At the time, many thought we were insane – giving our intellectual property away and enabling prospective competitors to build their own competing clouds.

We’ve always been confident in our award-winning service, Fanatical Support, and felt that by giving back to the open source and cloud communities we could all accomplish more.

Yesterday saw the culmination of many months of hard work by the Rackspace Cloud development team when the next-generation Cloud Servers, powered by OpenStack™, completed the private Alpha phase and entered the Beta phase in our US data centre. This is an exciting time for Rackspace, and a huge milestone in the history of OpenStack as it means we are getting closer to being able to offer an open cloud platform to our customers. The next steps are to finalise the Beta phase in our US data centre, and use the lessons learnt there to adapt for the International market in the coming months.

We’ve made a huge amount of progress during the Alpha program, and have seen some great improvements to an already excellent platform. These range from better responsiveness of the API, to seeing a single user able to concurrently spin up hundreds of servers within minutes. We will continue to develop this during the Beta phase, with an aim of enriching the overall user experience.

We are proud to be one of the largest providers of public cloud in the world, and we will continue to test and develop our next generation OpenStack-based cloud platform until it reaches the level of stability and reliability that our customers expect. We have already invested thousands of man-hours and millions of dollars in the infrastructure to date.

In addition to our new cloud platform, we’ve also been working on a new interface for customers and partners. The Beta phase includes access to a new control panel and an improved API.

We’ve been working closely with some of our valued partners during the Alpha phase, including RightScale.

“We have been working with Rackspace for quite a while now and are excited to have been part of the Alpha program. Our initial experience has shown what we expected…that Rackspace’s leadership in the OpenStack community has positioned them well to make Cloud Servers faster, more scalable and provide a reliable platform for partners like us and for their customers. It is exciting to watch the OpenStack community continue to grow and to be part of the ecosystem creating real products that solve real user problems.” Bailey Caldwell, VP – RightScale

We remain fully committed to the OpenStack project, and are looking forward to launching our Next-Generation Cloud Servers powered by OpenStack later in the year.

You can expect further blog posts both here, and on www.rackspace.com as this exciting project progresses, including invitations to apply to join the Beta phase on the International architecture.

-Matthew Johns
@mattjohns1