Rackspace Open Cloud Offers Easily Scalable Computing — and Freedom From Vendor Lock-in

Customers Can Now Start Using Public, Private or Hybrid Hosting Solutions on the industry’s First Production-Ready Cloud Powered by OpenStack Software

SAN ANTONIO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, Rackspace® (NYSE: RAX), the service leader in cloud computing, announced the unlimited availability of Cloud Databases and Cloud Servers powered by OpenStack, along with a powerful and elegant new Control Panel. These solutions, backed by Rackspace’s renowned Fanatical Support®, further expand Rackspace’s broad Cloud hosting portfolio, which is used today by over 180,000 customers worldwide.

“Rackspace is disrupting the current model of how IT is consumed”

The introduction of these open cloud products marks the first time any company has deployed a large-scale open source public cloud powered by OpenStack. Customers can now select from private, public or hybrid offerings and have the flexibility to deploy their solutions in a Rackspace data center or another data center of their choice.

Rackspace’s open cloud products also give application developers and IT organizations in businesses large and small the ability to build, test and deploy applications in the cloud for the first time without being locked-in.

“Rackspace is disrupting the current model of how IT is consumed,” said Lanham Napier, CEO of Rackspace. “We have delivered on our promise to implement OpenStack in our cloud offerings, and to free customers from the vendor lock-in that they face at other major cloud providers. We’re delivering open, high-performance, scalable and easy-to-use cloud solutions, while empowering customers to choose features, services, prices and locations based on the needs of their business. At the heart of Rackspace is Fanatical Support, which means we put our customers’ needs and wants first. Today, we are extending this approach by giving the market an open alternative, enabling them to choose how and where they use the cloud.”

Rackspace’s expansive open cloud portfolio includes not only Cloud Servers and Databases, but also Cloud Files object storage with a content delivery network, Cloud Sites platform as a service for .NET and PHP, load balancers, and monitoring.

“Our experience with the open Rackspace Cloud products has been absolutely seamless,” said Nand Mulchandani, CEO of ScaleXtreme. “One of the things we found right away is that it is completely standards-compliant and we didn’t have to make any changes to our OpenStack APIs. Also, the new control panel is much richer, much simpler and a lot faster than the previous version. Customers will find it a completely new experience, although the core functionality is familiar.”

The new Cloud Servers powered by OpenStack deliver increased efficiency, scalability and agility to customers, who can launch as many as 200 reliable cloud servers in 20 minutes.

Cloud Servers highlights:

• This marks the first large-scale, production-ready public cloud deployment powered by OpenStack
• Enables private, public, and multi-vendor cloud applications, on or off premise, under one open technology
• Delivers enhanced API performance, as it is 25x faster for server create requests
• Increases ability to scale, as it has default rate limits (which can be raised on a per account basis) of 20x more servers per day

“The new Rackspace Cloud Servers began delivering business value to us and our customers almost instantly,” said Tom Lounibos, CEO of SOASTA. “We were able to easily integrate them into our performance testing platform, CloudTest® and we have successfully spun up thousands of servers for real-world online and mobile app testing. When we conduct testing around large initiatives such as the 2012 London Olympics, the ability to scale quickly is an absolute must. We are seeing what a difference the OpenStack API is making. Making API calls to spin up servers is so much faster now, and that’s crucial for a performance and load testing solution like SOASTA.”

Rackspace’s Cloud Databases offering is developed with an architecture that combines open cloud technology and a dedicated storage network that is purpose-built for consistent, superior performance.

Cloud Databases highlights:

• Based on OpenStack, the MySQL database service is built on infrastructure that is optimized for running databases in public cloud environments
• Delivers 200% faster (3X) performance than a leading competitor (using benchmark tests described at this link: http://www.rackspace.com/blog/performance-matters-rackspace-cloud-databases-is-faster-than-amazon-rds/)

All of Rackspace’s open cloud products can be accessed through the new Control Panel, which gives IT administrators and developers a simple and intuitive user interface designed from the ground up with their perspective in mind. The Control Panel is built for speed and ease of use, and allows customers to manage both existing and new cloud products as they emerge. The new Control Panel makes complex, large-scale cloud deployments as easy as a few mouse clicks.

The new Control Panel allows users to:

• Tag servers, databases, and websites to easily identify and organize infrastructure elements
• Search by name, tag, IP address and more
• Filter lists to quickly find a server
• Use Action Cogs to display contextual menus of most-used actions to complete tasks faster
• Receive Dynamic Feedback providing real-time status information about the state of infrastructure

All current Rackspace customers can begin experiencing the new Control Panel immediately by signing in with their existing usernames and passwords. Once inside the Control Panel, customers can view and manage their current services and launch new Cloud Servers and Cloud Databases.

New customers can sign up for the open Rackspace Cloud solutions at http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/.

In addition, customers now have the ability to use the open Rackspace Cloud in hybrid or private cloud instances. Customers can choose the best platform for their applications by realizing the power of hybrid computing through RackConnect™. This solution allows the flexibility and elasticity of the open cloud, as well as the enhanced security and performance characteristics of traditional hosting on dedicated hardware. RackConnect provides integration between public and private clouds within Rackspace, and the Open Cloud provides open standards to help customers experience the power of Hybrid Hosting between clouds located anywhere.

To further strengthen its open cloud portfolio, Rackspace is planning to offer unlimited availability of Cloud Networks and Cloud Block Storage this fall.

About Rackspace

Rackspace® Hosting (NYSE: RAX) is the service leader in cloud computing and founder of OpenStack®, an open source cloud platform. The San Antonio-based company provides Fanatical Support® to its customers and partners across a portfolio of IT services, including Dedicated Cloud, Public Cloud and Hybrid Hosting. Rackspace has been recognized by Bloomberg BusinessWeek as a Top 100 Performing Technology Company and was featured on Fortune’s list of 100 Best Companies to Work For. The company was also positioned in the Leaders Quadrant by Gartner Inc. in the “2011 Magic Quadrant for Managed Hosting.” For more information, visit www.rackspace.com.

Forward Looking Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of Rackspace Hosting could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including any statements concerning expected development, performance or market acceptance associated with Cloud Databases and Cloud Servers powered by OpenStack, and the new Control Panel; anticipated operational and financial benefits from Cloud Databases and Cloud Servers powered by OpenStack, and the Control Panel; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include including the possibility that expected benefits from the Cloud Databases and Cloud Servers powered by OpenStack, and the Control Panel may not materialize because these products are not generally accepted in the marketplace, which could occur due to certain factors including (i) a failure to market the products cost effectively, differentiate the product from competitive products or communicate differentiations effectively, (ii) the reliability, quality or compatibility associated with the products, (iii) changes in technology which adversely affect the products’ benefits, (iv) slowdowns in the general economy or technology industry that impact consumer spending habits, (v) internal strategy decisions that impact the product, and (vi) and other risks that are described in Rackspace Hosting’s Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2012, filed with the SEC on May 9, 2012. Except as required by law, Rackspace Hosting assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements publicly, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future.

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