TechCrunch is the technology industry’s most influential media organization and when they make moves the implications can be deep. Recently TechCrunch moved to the Rackspace Cloud and TechCrunch’s CTO, Nik Cubrilovic, talked with building43’s host Robert Scoble about what the move’s implications were to traffic, uptime, peace of mind, and also costs. Across the board Nik praised Rackspace Cloud. In the interview Cubrilovic revealed that they moved from a company that was providing free hosting and are now paying to use Rackspace’s services.

Robert Scoble interviews Nik Cubrilovic from Rackspace Hosting on Vimeo.

Rackers all over the country are gearing up for the third annual Thanksgiving Food Drive. In November of 2008, Rackers were able to collect enough food to feed 500 San Antonio families, 25 Virginia families, 35 Austin families, and 60 families in the DFW area. All together, Rackspace joined together to support 620 families in need. This was a huge accomplishment and Rackers rallied together to achieve this goal.

This year, our goal for San Antonio is to feed 750 needy local families – 800 company wide, including all locations. Throughout 2009, the need for food has grown to the highest level since the “food security” report began in 1995. 1 in 7 Americans struggles to get enough to eat, and more than a third go hungry from time to time. An estimated 36.2 million Americans are food insecure. Of those 36 million, almost 13 million are children and 2 million are seniors. Last year, over 25 million people used a Food Bank for emergency food assistance. Our goal may be ambitious, but the need for food is growing.

On Friday, November 20th Rackers in San Antonio will be assembling 750 food baskets. Austin Rackers will be distributing food collected to needy families through the Capital Area Food Bank. On Saturday, November 21st, San Antonio Rackers will be distributing all boxes to needy families to benefit the San Antonio Food Bank.

See below for pictures of last year’s food drives:

For more information on hunger in the United States, click here.

That’s right, for the third year now, Rackspace is now accepting applications for the 2009 FANATI® Award for Outstanding Customer Service. For three years now, Rackspace has awarded The FANATI to the one customer who best demonstrates ‘Fanatical Support’ when it comes to their customers.

Here at Rackspace, we’ve built a reputation based on service, known to our customers as Fanatical Support®; our anytime, anywhere, any way approach to customer service. And we know we’re not the only ones who put customer needs first. That’s why we created The FANATI in 2007 to recognize one of our customers for valuing customer service as much as we do.

The contest consists of two rounds of judging (judging by a panel of experts and a customer satisfaction survey). Customers first complete the application process located on the MyRackspace® customer portal. The past two years, the award has only been available to our Managed Hosting customers. But this year we are opening it to all US-based customers including Cloud and Email & Apps customers. Those customers will be able to access the application online here.

The other thing we are changing this year is the format of the application. No longer is it just a written application answering a bunch of questions. This year we want to make it personal and with a touch of creativity. That is why we are only accepting video applications! All our customers need to do is create a short (less than five minutes) video explaining what they do and how they exemplify outstanding customer service. It should be interesting none the less.

So if you’re a customer, and you think your customer service is pretty good…award winning even…then log on to the MyRackspace portal or click the link on your control panel, and let us hear from you.

For more information on The FANATI, click here, or leave us a comment below if you have any questions.

This week Rackspace launched No More Servers, a call for businesses to stop buying servers and instead buy services from a hosting provider. The campaign launches on the heels of the Q3 earnings call that shows businesses are indeed responding to hosting as a way to maximize resources and talent.

No More Servers points to the breadth of hosting services that Rackspace offers – Managed, Cloud and Email & Apps. Hosting allows businesses to avoid massive upfront investments in hardware as well as the extensive amount of time and cost spent deploying and managing servers. It also shields companies from making inaccurate capacity predictions and poor purchase decisions, which exposes them to the risk of limited computing resources or financial waste. (read more…)

Today, Rackspace shared survey results revealing the growing problem of businesses struggling to cope with the demands of managing their own servers. The study, conducted by LoudHouse on behalf of Rackspace, investigated the views of more than 441 IT managers at mid-size enterprises and revealed that approximately one third of their IT staff’s time is spent on server management, which could limit their ability to focus on strategic initiatives that could benefit the business.

The survey revealed some interesting stats:

Selfish Servers Demand IT Director Time
IT teams reported spending 60 percent of their time troubleshooting and managing servers, while only 27 percent of time is spent on strategic and value-add activities.

Poor Purchasing is Problematic
More than half (51 percent) of respondents have made mistakes in their server capacity planning. Fifteen percent have bought too many servers and 36 percent have failed to buy enough.

Attitudes toward Cloud Computing
Thirty five percent of companies identify themselves as ‘proactive and slightly ahead of the curve’ when it comes to describing their approach to new technologies, while 28 percent remain ‘cautious and reactive.’

* The following article recently appeared in Newsweek Japan.
Tech enthusiasts, executives and investors are always looking for the next big, disruptive technology, and they appear to have found it in cloud computing. The movement of IT hardware and software out of offices and factories and onto the web promises to deliver huge cost savings, create new business models, and threaten incumbent technologies and the global corporations that deliver them.

As with any ballyhooed tech revolution, this one is generating lots of hype and smoke. But there’s real fire underneath this trend. Companies already are using the cloud to save money and become more efficient and creative. Wider adoption of cloud computing will lead to a new burst of productivity in the world economy, including in ways not yet widely appreciated. (read more…)

Today, Lanham Napier, Rackspace’s president and CEO, was featured on CNBC sharing some thoughts about technology and customer service:

Napier: The New Edge in Tech
By: Lanham Napier, CEO, Rackspace US

Things go wrong in computing. Anyone who uses a laptop knows that. It doesn’t matter whether the computer hardware and software you use are located in your home or office, or miles away in the data center of a hosting company that allows businesses to buy computing services cheaply by the hour, the way they buy electricity. Things go wrong either way. Why is it, then, that so many of the sellers of computer hardware and software and hosting blame their customers and hide from them whenever there’s a major service glitch?

To continue reading the entire article, please follow this link.

Rackspace has experienced a service interruption during tonight’s scheduled maintenance on UPS Cluster G. We were testing phase rotation on a Power Distribution Unit (PDU) when a short occurred and caused us to lose the PDUs behind this Cluster. The phase rotation allows us to verify synchronization of power between primary and secondary sources.

All power has been restored and devices are being brought back online. The PDUs were down for a total of about 5 minutes. We have aborted the maintenance for the remainder of the evening and will reschedule this for another date.

Service to Cloud sites has been restored and we are continuing to work with Cloud sites customers to bring them online. We will continue to update the Cloud Server and Slicehost status on their respective websites, which you can access through these links:  Cloud Status and Slicehost Status.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact a member of your support team.

Sincerely,

Rackspace

On Friday, October 30th, Rackspace hosted the first ever Community Halloween Festival! Along with face painting, a pumpkin patch, bobbing for apples, pumpkin painting, and a huge obstacle course, Rackspace also created a child-friendly Haunted House made up of Racker “actors” – children were able to see mummies, werewolves, vampires, and witches. The entire event was free with a canned donation benefiting the San Antonio Food Bank.

See below for pictures of the event:

For more pictures, check out our Flickr Photo stream here.

Making eCommerce more secure and trustworthy for customers is a common concern for businesses with an eRetail component. Ensuring that your site will be able to handle fluctuating traffic is a second concern. If those sound like common dilemmas experienced by your business, we want to talk with you during the Dallas Road Show on November 5, 2009 at the House of Blues!

Rackspace Solutions Engineer Gregg Stout and Rackspace partner VeriSign will talk about eCommerce and the ways that businesses can effectively support this area of revenue generation. The topic is “Defining Security and Reliability within your eCommerce Infrastructure.”

We will also discuss topics such as the typical environment needed for eCommerce, security considerations required for compliance, and scaling a solution to handle changing volumes of traffic.

All Dallas Road Show events are free, fun and informative. We hope to see you there!

“Defining Security and Reliability within your eCommerce Infrastructure”

A Rackspace Road Show Event

November 5, 2009

4:30pm – 6:30pm

House of Blues

2200 N. Lamar Street, Dallas, Texas

To register for this event* or to see other topics during the Dallas Road Show, click here or call toll free: 888-571-8963.

*Please register for the Rackspace eCommerce event by November 4, 2009.