San Antonio, Texas - (The Hosting News) - September 15, 2008 - Managed web hosting services firm, Rackspace Managed Hosting, has included enterprise-class support of dedicated virtualized servers, as part of its ongoing virtualization initiative in EMEA.

The virtualization platform, built on VMware's third-generation virtualization software suite, maximises hardware investment with better utilisation of servers through virtual machines. The virtualization platform will enable businesses that experience high growth or fluctuations in capacity to quickly meet these demands, by making scaling easier through rapid Virtual Machine provisioning. The service also provides easy access to a stable and secure virtualised environment and is supported by Rackspace's brand of customer service, Fanatical Support.

Brian Thomson, MD of Rackspace EMEA noted, "We work closely with our customers on the type of products they need to help their business work more efficiently, and are excited to announce a virtualization platform that will provide greater flexibility to meet performance and capacity needs. Customers who were looking to adopt virtualization told us that security was a concern so we have developed our virtual servers to provide protection against unanticipated traffic spikes and security breaches. This enables customers to gain all the benefits of virtualization while reducing the associated risks."

The virtualization platform will be based on dedicated physical hardware for each customer and include the option of hybrid virtual and physical hosted environments. It will support mission-critical production systems and provide benefits including server consolidation, data protection and on-demand provisioning.

Adrian Palmer-Geaves CEO of Knowledge Solutions, who are already using Rackspace's virtualization service remarked, "Rackspace's virtualization platform enables Knowledge Solutions to deliver a seamless, scalable and secure hosting solution to our customers, particularly when they experience fluctuating traffic volumes. We have worked closely with Rackspace for a number of years and the virtual platform allows us to offer solutions that are closely aligned to our customers' business needs, in a competitive and responsive fashion."

Rackspace's US operation launched a virtualization offering earlier this year and has a number of virtual machines under management globally, using the virtualization infrastructure for internal IT operations as well as in its cloud hosting division, Mosso and email hosting division, Mailtrust virtualization is a highly-complex technology, but Rackspace's team of VMware Certified Engineers provides customers with the technical expertise needed to design and leverage a virtualised system.

Mr. Thomson added: "Virtualization is still an evolving technology, and we believe this is just the beginning for Rackspace. Our RackLabs research and development department continues to work with partners such as VMware, Microsoft and XenSource to make generational leaps in the virtualization hosting arena. We expect future releases of Rackspace virtualization Hosting to include enhanced disaster recovery, storage and scaling capabilities."

The new offering, comes on the heels of Rackspace's debut of Windows Server 2008 with an enhanced set of flexibility, security, reliability and management features suited for customers' IT hosting needs. As Microsoft's 2007 "Hosting Provider of the Year," Rackspace has worked with Microsoft on the launch for more than a year and will be introducing Windows Server 2008 Standard, Enterprise and web editions to its comprehensive product portfolio in conjunction with Microsoft's worldwide launch. Windows Server 2008 is designed to provide customers the ability to deliver rich web-based experiences efficiently and effectively, with improved administration and diagnostics, development and application tools, and lower infrastructure costs.

The new, flexible Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 provides full customisation of web servers to configure only the server roles and modules needed, creating a more secure and streamlined Web platform for customers.

Windows Server 2008 also includes the enhanced Windows PowerShell to automate common administration tasks for server roles with command-line shell and scripting language to more easily control system administration and to accelerate automation. The hardened operating system and security innovations include firewall improvements, policy based networking and auditing advances to provide improved protection for customers' data. Rackspace recently completed a successful beta test of Windows Server 2008 with positive customer feedback. After successful testing of the new server's performance and stability, Rackspace is now making the new Windows operating system available to customers.

Rackspace provides a diverse suite of enterprise-class hosted IT services to businesses of all sizes, with hosting specialisation and expertise, integrating the industry's best technologies and delivering them as services, as an extension of its customers' IT departments. Rackspace's portfolio of companies also includes the Mosso (www.mosso.com) cloud computing platform and Mailtrust(tm) (www.mailtrust.com), a provider of business-class hosted email solutions.

To learn more about the new Windows Server 2008 from Rackspace, please visit: www.rackspace.co.uk/windows2008.

For more information about Rackspace's virtualization offering, please visit: www.rackspace.co.uk/virtualisation

To learn more about Rackspace Managed Hosting, please visit: www.rackspace.com.

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