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Rackspace was founded in 1998 by Richard Yoo, Dirk Elmendorf and Patrick Condon when they found that the customers of an earlier ISP they founded actually needed most assistance in figuring out how to host their applications.
Since then, Rackspace has grown into a massive operation, bringing in $230 million in net revenue during first quarter of 2011.
The company expects to see its 2011 revenue top 2010's revenue by at least 24 percent.
Rackspace recently took over an abandoned shopping mall in San Antonio, Texas to be its corporate headquarters, giving it 1.2 million square feet or 28 acres under roof to expand into.
A cistern outside the main entrance collects the humidity from inside the building (literally employee sweat) and stores it. The water collected is more than enough than is needed to maintain the building’s landscaping, even in 100-plus degree Texas heat.
Initial plans for a data center at the headquarters were scrapped due to lack of broadband to the site.
Rackspace's nine (9) data centers are in San Antonio, Texas (2); Dallas, Texas; Herndon, Va.; Chicago, Ill.; Ashburn, Va.; London; Slough, UK; and Hong Kong
Rackspace employees affectionately refer to themselves as "Rackers"
There are over 3,000 Rackers worldwide and the company recently said it plans to hire 1,000 more by the end of the year.
The company is frequently heralded in surveys on top companies to work for within the U.S.
Rackspace has over 142,000 customers globally.
The customer base spans over 120 countries.
The company supports over 2 million enterprise-class e-mail boxes.
Rackspace runs more than 70,000 servers
Rackspace is committed to the channel, with a growing program that supports 4,500 partners.
These partners generate 70 percent of the company's business.
This spring Rackspace updated its partner program to consolidate its four distinct channel programs into a single global partner experience.
The program enables partners to sign a single contract to receive compensation for qualifying resales and referrals across dedicated , hosting, cloud hosting, e-mail hosting and Rackspace Cloud Drive initiatives.
The program has also introduced four partner tiers, a new partner portal and the kickoff of greater investments in sales and marketing assistance for partners.
Part of this assistance will include the development of micro sites to drive content directly to partners' websites, co-branded collateral automation, and a virtual briefing center with Learning Management System (LMS) capabilities to improve education and training about the product portfolio.
Additionally, Rackspace is offering select partners a designated channel manager to handle contract and co-marketing activities and to field difficult questions.
In March, Rackspace announced Rackspace Cloud Builders, a new business that will offer training and certification, deployment services, and ongoing support to enterprises and service providers through its team of OpenStack experts.
Through this program, Rackspace will for the first time extend its commitment to customer service beyond the company's data centers to stand behind any OpenStack cloud deployment.
Rackspace also this spring announced the availability of Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers, a cloud-based load balancing solution that enables quick builds of high availability configurations.
Rackspace recently burst into the desktop virtualization scene through a partnership with Citrix to offer a new Rackspace Hosted Virtual Desktop Platform. The partnership will have Rackspace tapping into Citrix's 9,000-strong VAR program so that these partners can sell Rackspace's platform to their customers.
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