This past week Rackspace announced it’s Windows Cloud Server product in beta. This exciting because it gives a great option to those looking for an affordable, powerful Windows server solution. Since Rackspace has launched it’s cloud products our clients will ofter ask us:

1. why we should pay more for Rackspace?

2. are they truly committed to delivering services on the cloud when their core business is in managed/dedicated hosting?

At CloudDaddy we work with many hosts and have for years and the first question is easy to answer. Rackspace gets the business and understands the needs of their clients. They never look at as a server as just a server, but rather a server that is powering your company. Their fanatical support tagline is not a myth. You will get fanatical support with Rackspace and there always somebody that is willing to go the extra mile to help. Their commitment to you and knowing that they are working as hard as you are to keep your business running is worth every penny. We often suggest to clients to just start with Rackspace because in the long-run it will save you money because you will not need to pay frequent migration costs because you’ve found a permanent hosting partner.

2. As a Cloud company, the second question was harder for us to answer and we wanted to find out more about the Rackspacecloud, so we took a trip out to San Antonio to visit the Racker headquarters and get a tour of the castle and meet with the cloud folks. We’ve been using the Rackspacecloud (formerly know as Mosso) for over two-years and have always found the support and service to be as great as the dedicated support. It’s not manged, but the support and service is just as great. After meeting with the cloud folks and seeing first hand how much human capital, talent and technology Rackspace has invested in the cloud it looks like the Rackspace cloud is a great long-term investment.

On my tour of the castle, I was also fortunate enough to meet the Rackspace chairman, Graham Weston. He took 20 minutes out of his day while he was with one of the fore most experts on customer service to talk to CloudDaddy (one of their clients and partners). He intently asked questions about the cloud and listened to our cloud needs. He asked me directly what I thought about the Rackspace pricing.  Meeting with a chairmen that is so committed to customer service and ensuring all its employees understand their mission was a unique a experience. Graham’s leadership is driving a company that is going to providing the best in class cloud solutions for a long time. Most companies are going to view the cloud as another area to make a profit (without committing the necessary resources) and others will do it with little to no support. At Rackspace they are investing in the technology and people, to continue the same level of customer service they’ve always delivered. Graham and his cloud team openly admitted there will be problems long the way, but when there are they will have people there to send you an email, answer the phone and chat with you to tell you what happened and how they are going to help you fix it. They understand that the people side of the technology business is just as important as the technology itself.

Kudos to Rackspace. After seeing the tour and meeting with Graham I was so impressed that I bought 100 shares of RAX. A big shout out to Mario and Andrew in Rackspace’s Austin office for setting up the tour and always providing us with that extra level of Racker support that we love so much.

If you are interested in getting setup on the Rackspacecloud, give us a call at 203.883.9194 or email us at info@clouddaddy.com. We’d love to talk to you about your cloud needs. We look forward to helping you get your apps on the cloud.

-j