SMBs Turn to Rackspace for Managed Support and Expertise When Adopting Microsoft® Office 365™

SAN ANTONIO - Sept. 23, 2015 - Rackspace® (NYSE: RAX), the #1 managed cloud company, today announced that AllTech Systems, Inc., a leader in recruitment for the technology industry, and Oliver Wight®, a business consultancy firm, have turned to Rackspace for Fanatical Support® for Office 365, a cloud business productivity suite. With this offering, AllTech and Oliver Wight leverage Rackspace expertise and Fanatical Support to migrate, implement and operate their Office 365 environments.

Office 365 enables organizations to get work done more efficiently by allowing users to easily collaborate across different platforms and devices from multiple office locations. Fanatical Support for Office 365, which was released into general availability in July 2015, allows customers to tap the productivity of the Office 365 suite without the pain of managing the environment themselves.

'We're not IT people, so we knew we needed technical guidance in order to successfully move our business to Office 365,' said Lenny Burke, account manager at AllTech Systems. 'Rackspace helped make the migration process seamless and painless. Our dedicated Rackspace support team did all the things that you'd expect an internal IT team to do, which helped us move two years ahead of where we were from an internal technology perspective in just one weekend.'

As a small business with remote employees located globally, AllTech relies heavily on email to streamline communication and productivity. Prior to moving to Rackspace for Fanatical Support for Office 365, AllTech employees used disparate email accounts, which hindered global communication and the company's ability to implement a disaster recovery plan for email data.

Similarly, consultancy firm Oliver Wight was experiencing mailbox size limitations with an outdated email solution that was impeding productivity for its global workforce. The company originally purchased Office 365 directly from Microsoft. However, with only one employee dedicated to IT, Oliver Wight realized it needed additional support to effectively run the tool internally.

'It was crucial that Oliver Wight collaborate with a company like Rackspace to provide the additional support we needed to get Office 365 up and running for our employees worldwide,' said Jim Giordano, IT manager at Oliver Wight. 'Learning everything it takes to run Office 365 is a large financial and time commitment. With Rackspace supporting the application, we can focus on our core business while knowing that there is a responsive and knowledgeable support team available to us 24x7x365.'

Both companies turned to Rackspace to help remove the complexities surrounding the migration to and adoption of Office 365. The 24x7x365 support for Office 365 that Rackspace provides includes deployment and migration assistance, tier-one troubleshooting and prioritized Microsoft support escalations. The support is available in two solution offerings:

  • Fanatical Support for Office 365 - Rackspace sells and offers tier-one support for six Office 365 business and enterprise plans.
  • Managed Services for Office 365 - Rackspace offers a premium level of support for mid-market and enterprise-level customers on top of Office 365 plans through either Rackspace or Microsoft.

According to Jeffrey Mann and Billy Pray, Research Vice Presidents at Gartner, 'By 2022, the proportion of business users provisioned, in whole or in part, with office system capabilities from the cloud will grow to 60 percent, or approximately 700 million users, up from 15 percent in 2015.'[1]

'As an increasing number of businesses turn to Office 365 to boost workplace productivity and collaboration via the cloud, more customers like Oliver Wight and AllTech Systems will look to Rackspace experts to help migrate, implement and support these business-critical applications,' said Doug Juanarena, VP of Rackspace Cloud Office. 'Rackspace has been working closely with Microsoft for 13 years, and we've been named Microsoft Partner of the Year a record five times. We are well positioned to provide the support and expertise that customers need when adopting this technology.'

To learn more about the full Rackspace Cloud Office portfolio, visit http://www.rackspace.com/cloud-office.

[1] Source: Gartner [Google Apps for Work and Other Cloud Office Key Initiative Overview], [Jeffrey Mann, Bill Pray], [14 July 2015]

About Rackspace

Rackspace (NYSE: RAX), the #1 managed cloud company, helps businesses tap the power of cloud computing without the challenge and expense of managing complex IT infrastructure and application platforms on their own. Rackspace engineers deliver specialized expertise on top of leading technologies developed by OpenStack, Microsoft, VMware and others, through a results-obsessed service known as Fanatical Support®. The company has more than 300,000 customers worldwide, including two-thirds of the FORTUNE 100. Rackspace was named a leader in the 2015 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting, and has been honored as one of Fortune's Best Companies to Work For in six of the past eight years. Learn more at 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 operational results related to any particular customer or customers of our customers associated with our hosting solutions; any other statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include issues relating to the performance of a customer's configuration caused by forces outside of the control of Rackspace; changes in the economy, technological and competitive factors, regulatory factors, and other risks that are described in Rackspace Hosting's Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2015, filed with the SEC on August 10, 2015. 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.

Media Contact:

Monica Jacob

210-312-6745

monica.jacob@rackspace.com

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