rackspace

Which web hosting companies and related businesses operate the largest number of servers? Rackspace announced they had hit the 50,000 mark recently, and DatacenterKnowledge took the opportunity to determine who is in the same league. Three web hosting companies lead the pack: 1&1 Internet (55,000), Rackspace (50,038), and The Planet (48,500). They are followed by Akamai Technologies, OVH, SBC Communications, Verizon, Time Warner Cable, and SoftLayer.

Web hosting company Rackspace will be added to the NASDAQ Internet Index, according to an announcement from the The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. Fourteen companies will be removed from the index. The annual evaluation of the NASDAQ Internet Index is traditionally issued every March, and this year it will become effective with the market open on Monday, March 23, 2009.

The Index is designed to track the performance of the largest and most liquid U.S.-listed companies engaged in internet-related businesses.

This week Rackspace Hosting unveiled a free online tool, which helps businesses estimate their carbon footprint. The carbon calculator takes into account all aspects of operation--commute, shipping, number of servers, etc. Developed in copperation with Native Energy--an international provider of carbon offsets and emission reductions, the service is the latest addition to Rackspace's Greenspace initiative, which promotes green technology in the data center and energy efficiency.

Last week, Rackspace announced the acquisition of two companies - VPS provider Slicehost and cloud storage service Jungle Disk. While both acquisitions are indicative of Rackspace's new cloud hosting strategy, Jungle Disk is an interesting case, being a cloud storage/backup service originally based on Amazon S3. JungleDisk uses Amazon's global cloud service to allow the sharing of an unlimited amount of information through a secure, mountable network drive and automatic backup. The pricing model is also innovative -- users pay only for the amount of data they store, per gigabyte, without additional setup and support fees.

Recently Rackspace announced the results of their second annual green technology customer survey, the completion of an energy-efficient data center, a second annual GreenDay for employees, and an expanded partnership with NativeEnergy to reduce the company’s carbon footprint. We talk to Mr. John Engates, CTO, Rackspace Hosting, about the company's latest green hosting initiatives.