Rackspace® Hosting (NYSE: RAX), the open cloud company, today announced new features and enhanced support offerings for the Rackspace Private Cloud Software, dubbed “Alamo.” Since the OpenStack-powered Rackspace Private Cloud Software launched in August, thousands of organizations have downloaded the software from over 125 countries spanning all continents, with people from Fortune 100 companies, colleges, universities and research centers downloading the product.

“The goal of the Rackspace Private Cloud Software is to provide customers with a fast and easy way to deploy a free OpenStack-powered private cloud anywhere in the world,” Mike Aeschliman, head of engineering and product for Rackspace Private Cloud. “With the new release, we can now offer Fanatical Support to customers’ cloud software using our remote access tools. This is a huge step in our mission to enable organizations to start realizing the benefits of clouds and trust them for mission-critical workloads.”

As part of this new release, Rackspace has extended its service portfolio for Rackspace Private Cloud. The new support level, Core Software Support, now includes 24x7x365 remote access support of Rackspace Private Cloud Software stack. Rackspace is offering this new service level in addition to the Software Escalation Support that already exists. With Core Software Support, Rackspace engineers will now remotely log in to customers’ private cloud environments to provide services such as installation, configuration, patching and troubleshooting.

Some of the new features of Rackspace Private Cloud Software include:

• Block Storage: Highly scalable Block Storage turns external storage into an additional storage volume for a private cloud environment, based on OpenStack Cinder.
• Object Storage: Powered by OpenStack Swift, Object Storage allows customers to create massively scalable storage resource pools that can be used by a Rackspace Private Cloud environment for storing files as well as server images taking advantage of commodity hardware to reduce costs.
• Monitoring: Graphite and Collectd applications are included to extend the monitoring and alerting capabilities available to private cloud environments.

The latest feature release of Rackspace Private Cloud Software incorporates the latest release of the OpenStack Cloud Software platform, Folsom, released to the public in September 2012 and the same platform that powers the Rackspace Cloud supporting thousands of customers. The Folsom release was developed by hundreds of contributors in the OpenStack community who implemented about 185 new features.

“Fisoc’s product, Buzz Points, is a merchant-funded loyalty program that enables banks and credit unions to connect consumers and merchants through social media engagement and rewards. As a result of our firm’s rapid growth in the financial services industry, we selected Rackspace’s Private Cloud Software to provide a secure, scalable and reliable environment,” stated David Fruhling II, chief operating and financial officer for fisoc. “The new software features are particularly important to us for two key reasons. First, the enhanced monitoring, alerts and support capabilities will allow us to provide the highest levels of uptime to our banking customers. Secondly, we are a big-data company with massive amounts of financial and social data to use in targeting and analytics, and the new Object Storage features will allow us to store and manage this data in a more efficient and cost effective manner.”

Organizations that choose Rackspace as the foundation for their private cloud strategy will benefit from the large OpenStack ecosystem of innovation, plus a common architecture between their private cloud and some of the leading public clouds, empowering them with choices. To help organizations in their journey to the cloud, Rackspace also offers training and certification courses for application developers and DevOps engineers. These programs enable customers to build their private cloud skills and the experience required to install, run, and operate OpenStack clouds.

To download the software and get more information, visit www.rackspace.com/cloud/private.

About Rackspace

Rackspace® Hosting (NYSE: RAX) is the open cloud company, delivering open technologies and powering more than 197,000 customers worldwide. Rackspace provides its renowned Fanatical Support® across a broad portfolio of IT products, including Public Cloud, Private Cloud, Hybrid Hosting and Dedicated Hosting. The company offers choice, flexibility and freedom from vendor lock in. Rackspace has been recognized by Bloomberg BusinessWeek as a Top 100 Performing Technology Company and is featured on Fortune’s list of 100 Best Companies to Work For. Rackspace was positioned in the Leaders Quadrant by Gartner Inc. in the “2011 Magic Quadrant for Managed Hosting.” Rackspace is headquartered in San Antonio with offices and data centers around the world. For more information, visit www.rackspace.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

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 Rackspace Core Software Support or the Alamo software; anticipated operational and financial benefits from Rackspace Core Software Support or the use of the Alamo software; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the possibility that expected benefits from Rackspace Core Software Support may not materialize because the products and services are not generally accepted in the marketplace, which could occur due to certain factors including (i) a failure to market the products and services cost effectively, differentiate the products and services from competitive products and services or communicate differentiations effectively, (ii) the reliability, quality or compatibility associated with the products and services, (iii) changes in technology which adversely affect the benefits of the products and services, (iv) slowdowns in the general economy or technology industry that impact consumer spending habits, (v) internal strategy decisions that impact the products and services, and (vi) and other risks that are described in Rackspace Hosting’s Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2012, filed with the SEC on November 7, 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.