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Oldtowncommons: Get in Order with SharePoint /Rackspace Email & Apps Blog/ - Sometimes teams simply get out of control. ... http://tinyurl.com/ygbkp3v 3 hours, 12 minutes
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_JackieD_: Rackspace Email discount for SpiceWorks community members (It's free to join the SW community) Get hooked up here :-D http://ow.ly/1o2XV 7 hours, 53 minutes
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kalebral: @kryptonics411 - need to talk with you about your Drizzle build machine, misplaced your email address - .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) 8 hours
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Rackcloud: @soulhuntre i apologize for the poor support experience. please email me .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) w/ the details & I will investigate. 8 hours, 57 minutes
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ChannelworldNL: Rackspace breidt partnerprogramma uit: Rackspace Hosting heeft zijn resellerprogramma voor Email & Apps uitgebre... http://twurl.nl/uz2n6h 17 hours, 53 minutes
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iPhone Now Natively Supports iCal for Calendar
iPhone versions 3.0 now allows you to access your Rackspace Email calendar through an iCal feed on your iPhone. This new feature will allow you to stay up-to-date by taking your calendar on the move with you wherever you go.
If you need help setting this feature up on your iPhone you can visit our Support Site for setup instructions.
[Case Study] Uforia Regains 400+ Hours of IT Staff Time Annually by Choosing Rackspace
Silicon Valley-based Uforia, founded by online gaming industry veterans, specializes in massively multiplayer online games (MMOG). Uforia creates a unique online gaming experience where gamers play free online games with the ability to enhance their experience. Using micro-transactions to purchase online enhancements, gamers can make characters look different or increase functionality with weapons and accessories.
Due to their corporate structure, Chris Keswani, marketing manager, was relying on hardware and technical support resources based in their Korean offices. When his US-based office needed support with email, they were up against both a 17-hour time difference and communication difficulties between Korean speaking technicians and English speaking users. If Chris needed immediate changes made to his office’s email account at 2pm in the afternoon, the request could take a day or more to be fulfilled. The lack of control over email was becoming a real challenge. Additionally, the email tasks being asked of their highly skilled IT staff were taking their time away from more important projects.
“Our IT staff was spending over 400 hours every year supporting email for our employees,” says Chris “It was costing us time, money, and resources that could have been focused on mission critical projects.”
He’d heard about Rackspace from former colleagues who mentioned that our email solution worked well for them and was easy to use. After he and a few others in his organization evaluated Rackspace, they decided to go with Rackspace Email & Apps because of the affordable cost and the “need for timely support on something as critical as email, made it important to deal with a vendor who had the resources to be responsive.”
Chris now has a new convenience factor with email. He no longer has to wait to make changes or add new mailboxes. When he had questions about using distribution lists, he sent an email to our support department. By the time he got a cup of coffee and returned to his desk, he had an email with the answer he needed. “We work with lots of vendors via email or phone and it typically takes a long time to get answers back,” he says. He’s happy to have email that he doesn’t have to worry about and support that’s always available and responsive to his needs. Email is no longer a challenge and his staff is once again focused on games.
How We Manage Large Datasets with Hadoop
A few weeks ago Robert Scoble stopped by our Blacksburg office and got a chance to interview Stu Hood for Building43.com. Stu has become one of the leading experts on using Hadoop and his use case here at Rackspace was recently published in the new O’Reilly book “Hadoop: The Definitive Guide”. During the interview Stu explains what Hadoop is and how it can be used to help manage large datasets.
Check out the video below to learn more:
My Experience with Rackspace Orientation (aka Rookie-O)
After reading “The Ownership Quotient,” I was reminded of my Rackspace orientation after we were acquired back in 2007. It was essentially our new parent company welcoming us into the family and a chance for us to meet without the digital filter that is the “interweb.”
During orientation, we were split into groups of 8-10 people that would be our “team” for the week. We called ourselves “The Uptime Warriors” or something similarly cheesy. In my team there were a couple of support reps, an account manager, a marketing rep, and some others. I’m a software dev guy, so the group was pretty mixed and represented a nice cross-section of the company. There was an Amazing Race-like game, where each team sent out two people at a time to various parts of the building to search for clues to the next step of a puzzle. This involved finding a particular veteran employee and asking yes or no questions like “Is your favorite color blue?” or “Did you once throw up at a company party?” We had a great time.
After introductions, we took a tour through various departments of the gigantic Rackspace building filled with energetic faces and friendly “Rackers”. I remember hearing the giant gong on the sales floor marking each new sale. They actually have a straight jacket hanging in the support department to recognize the “fanatic” of the month (awarded to the rep that best exemplifies Fanatical Support). Pictures of past fanatics in the jacket lined the top half of the huge wall. Everywhere we looked, the six Rackspace core values were posted on the wall. We played competitive trivia games involving the company policies and were entertained by the lawyers acting out a hilarious courtroom skit about legal issues we should be aware of. Our CEO, Lanham Napier, delivered a spirited rally that got the room riled up, followed by a speech on strength building by Graham Weston, our Chairman.
I remember thinking at one point that someone should record this whole thing to show the amount of attention and energy Rackspace puts into the orientation process. They were gearing these new recruits up to be “fanatics” in the work place; gladiators trained for battle, ready to be sent out into the world to rain fanaticism down on the masses. “The Ownership Quotient”, states that happy employees drive customer satisfaction which drives customer loyalty. That in turn drives profitability and growth. Needless to say, after that week in Texas, I was convinced that Rackspace is one of the best things that could’ve happened to Webmail.us.
Sneak Peek at our Plans
Last week we shared our view of the emerging world of on demand computing with some key partners and customers in San Francisco, CA. We are really excited about the future of what on demand computing presents and we want to share our plans for the future.
You can check out all of the highlights for our company in a blog post Lew Moorman, our Chief Strategy Officer, wrote on The Rackspace Blog.
Below are the specific plans around our division here at Rackspace that Lew shared:
“… We have big plans for our Apps and Email division. We are currently supporting over 1.2 million business class email seats. We continue to build out the best Exchange-IMAP hybrid email system that brings huge saving to our customers. But, we are also moving on to the next core IT problem. We want to help businesses solve their basic storage issues. So in the coming months you will see a few new offers from us. One, an advanced, but low cost mail archiving offer. So whether you are sick of managing large PSTs or need a compliance tool, giving your employees unlimited archiving will soon be an affordable option. Next, we plan to offer a variety of tools to help with basic collaboration and backup. Every business needs a basic fileshare. A centrally managed, infinitely scalable fileshare is on the way. And, want to offer your employees an automated PC backup and web access tool? Stick around.“
Exciting times! Stay tuned.
Is your Browser Ready for Retirement?
When you reach out for support regarding something on your computer, one of the first troubleshooting steps is confirming you have the latest browser version. You’re asked this because there are countless symptoms and effects on your computer from using an outdated browser.
Here are just a few reasons to keep up with the curve:
Internet Use: Believe it or not, most websites are built and maintained based on the latest internet standards and latest version of browsers. The symptoms could be as benign as a logo not showing up or as aggressive as the site not functioning at all.
Backwards compatibility: Not all tech companies pride themselves on taking the time to make sure their product is backwards compatible with other browsers. At Rackspace, our developers spend hours making sure customers can use our product to its full capacity in a variety of browsers. Imagine all the cool features developers could be working on if everyone kept their browsers up to date.
Are you convinced yet? If so, here are links to the latest browser versions for the most popular browsers. Or, you can download them from the “Help” tab in your browser and periodically check for updates.
Firefox: 3.0.11
Google and Apple Admit Microsoft Still Matters to Businesses
This week, Google and Apple each announced that they will now offer some type of Microsoft support with their apps. Looks like their “do it our way” approach wasn’t working in corporate America—where Microsoft is still king.
While many businesses are discovering the benefits of innovative, online, hosted applications, many businesses still rely primarily on Microsoft apps and Microsoft Exchange. Users aren’t willing to give up the Microsoft features they’ve come to know—and they shouldn’t have to. Companies like Google and Apple are now realizing that the desktop software isn’t going away any time soon. And since businesses aren’t going to leave Microsoft, you need to provide them with the integration tools they need, if you want them to use your products and services.
At Rackspace, we seek to meet businesses where they are. We realize that most users use Microsoft Outlook, and users must be able to live and work in Outlook, even when they’re away from the office. That’s why all of our services are designed to fully support the Microsoft user, from the office, on the road, and from their mobile device.
Looks like Google and Apple are starting to realize that serving businesses is a bit different from serving consumers.
New Support Site Adds to Fanatical Support
We are proud to announce the launch of our new Support Site. It is the one location where you can access all of our support information for each of our services.
The new site was designed to give our customers immediate access to the support documentation they need. We took our existing support information, re-wrote it, organized it into categories and subcategories, and built a new search system so you can find your answers in a hurry – you can even access live chat support!
We built this new site on a content management system called Drupal. This system makes it easy to quickly update and add new content to the site. This system also supports media, like video and images.
To truly serve the changing needs of our customer base, we designed the support site to grow and evolve over time. We’ll continue investing in the site to ensure that it continues to be a source of Fanatical Support. So, take a look around. Feel free to suggest new topics or opportunities for improvement, and we always welcome unsolicited praise. Your feedback is vital to ensuring that you have the support tools you need when you need help.
Interactive Designers Peer Group in Southwest VA
Web designers in Southwest Virginia are plentiful but dispersed. With so much talent in the area, it’s hard to believe that no forum existed for designers to share ideas and thoughts. So, Jacob Puckett and I, members of the Rackspace design team, partnered with the NewVA Corridor Technology Council (NCTC) and Modea, a local digital design agency to form a group to remedy that.
The group’s mission is to provide support and education for local designers interested in interactive design principles.
Each meeting is participant-driven revolving around a presentation on a specific topic. So far, Jacob Puckett of Rackspace, has presented on paper prototyping. David Poteet, president of New City Media, enlightened the group on mental models. The development of Click ‘n Pledge for non-profit web ventures was discussed by Thomas Becher, president of the Roanoke-based public relations and advertising firm, tba. In the future, the group plans to delve into wireframing and designing for mobile devices. At the end of each meeting, the floor is opened to discuss the presentation and any other new and interesting developments in the world of web design.
If you’re a web designer in Southwest Virginia, you can join the fun too! More participation drives the flow of opinions and experiences making the group even more beneficial to everyone involved. To find out when the next meeting will be held, contact me.
[Case Study] IntervalZero Finds Internal Value by Choosing Rackspace
IntervalZero Inc. designs and develops embedded software products that deliver real-time capability and meet the needs of the international embedded technology market. After a management buyout, IntervalZero of Waltham, Massachusetts, found themselves evaluating whether their email would be best served by an on-premise email solution with third party maintenance or a completely off-premises hosting solution.
According to Daron Underwood, Vice President of Engineering, “as important as email is, not having adequate resources to support it was not an option.” After carefully balancing the initial and ongoing costs of on-premises email, Daron decided that completely outsourcing email to Rackspace would provide the dedicated attention and expertise that modern email demands. More importantly, “focusing time and energy on IT would take us away from our core mission.”
While looking at Rackspace for other IT hosting needs, he discovered our email services. “I’d shopped around for other options but hadn’t seen any other solution that compared to the Rackspace Email & Apps offering,” says Daron. IntervalZero uses Rackspace for all of their mailboxes and takes advantage of the ‘Combine and Save’ option. Interval Zero maintains Rackspace Email web-based email and Microsoft Exchange mailboxes in the same domain, under the same account, and even manages them through the same control panel. Daron and his colleagues can provision Rackspace Email or Microsoft Exchange mailboxes based on specific user needs and save up to $11 per user, per month!
IntervalZero can keep a laser sharp focus on their business goals while enjoying the type of expert, accessible support they were accustomed to from having corporate level IT resources in house. Since the switch, Daron says he’s extremely satisfied with his service and experience with Rackspace.