Rackspace Hosting announced its entrance into the cloud hosting space through the acquisition of two start-ups -- Slicehost and Jungle Disk. The purchase price of the combined acquisitions is approximately $11.5 million payable in cash and stock, with the potential for up to $16.5 million in additional payouts of cash and stock based on certain performance criteria.
Slicehost is a leader in Xen-based virtual machine hosting with more than 15,000 "slices" online today.
Jungle Disk offers cloud storage solutions that allow users to share cloud storage between multiple users through a secure, mountable network drive and automatic backup.
Rackspace said it intends to integrate capabilities from both acquisitions into its hosting portfolio. Rackspace's cloud strategy is now supported by three core offerings, all part of Mosso, Rackspace's Cloud Hosting Division. The company's existing Hosting Cloud and CloudFS storage offerings have been re-branded to reflect the company's newly integrated approach:
- Cloud Sites -- Rackspace's flagship cloud offering, The Hosting Cloud, is now Cloud Sites. Developed by Mosso, Rackspace's cloud division, it offers a scalable platform for handling huge traffic spikes and a pay-as-you-grow pricing model. Cloud Sites is a heterogeneous environment, supporting both Windows and Linux.
- Cloud Files -- Rackspace's internet-based storage service, CloudFS, is now Cloud Files. Cloud Files gives developers instant access to an enterprise-grade storage infrastructure. Cloud Files offers an SLA and a highly competitive pricing model with replicated storage starting at $0.15/GB. Also later this year, Limelight Networks will team with Rackspace to allow developers to easily distribute content to millions of end users around the world and bring scalable content delivery and application acceleration services to the masses. While continuing to support the Amazon S3 platform, Jungle Disk will port to Rackspace's Cloud Files system in the coming months. Jungle Disk comes in both desktop and workgroup editions across the Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.
- Cloud Servers -- This new hosting solution, which will deliver on-demand server capacity to businesses of all sizes, will leverage key technology developed by Slicehost, which uses Xen virtualization software. Slicehost will remain as the company's developer brand, creating innovative new features driven through shared intellectual property in conjunction with development initiatives from Rackspace. As part of the announcement, Slicehost also announced new, larger slices for high performance computing, lower prices as well as IP sharing for high availability computing.
"Cloud computing offers tremendous benefits to our customers that complement our traditional managed hosting services," said Lanham Napier, CEO, Rackspace Hosting. "Being a leader in hosting means being a leader in the cloud. Today, we made clear our intent to have the best suite of cloud offerings. Our new offerings are part of a strategy to bring cloud benefits to all businesses with simple, cost-effective products that everyone can use, backed by the best customer support that only Rackspace can deliver."
"On-demand computing is the new foundation of hosting," said Jason Seats, founder, Slicehost. "Rackspace gives us the ability to expand the Slicehost offer and meet the needs of the corporate world whose interest in cloud technologies has only just begun. In addition, no one else shares our customer first service philosophy more than Rackspace. It is an obvious fit."http://www.mosso.comhttp://www.rackspace.com
