Rackspace Cultivates New Customer with Addition of Scotts to Client Roster

Switch to Intensive Hosting Division Expected to Save Consumer Lawn and Garden Leader 21 percent in Managed Web Hosting Costs

HostReview.com
Monday, December 1, 2003; 12:00 AM

SAN ANTONIO —December 1, 2003— Rackspace Managed Hosting, the fastest growing managed hosting provider, today announced that it has added The Scotts Company to its list of enterprise customers. A global leader in consumer products for do-it-yourself lawn and garden care, Scotts outsources its entire North American consumer web site infrastructure to Rackspace's Intensive Hosting division.

Intensive Hosting, Rackspace's enterprise division for Microsoft only deployments, provides the managed infrastructure for the company's www.scotts.com site, which integrates all of Scotts' industry-leading brands including Miracle-Gro (www.miracle-gro.com), Ortho (www.ortho.com), Osmocote (www.osmocote.com) and the consumer Roundup brand (www.roundup.com) into a single, robust online lawn and garden destination. Handling more than 12 million visitors this year with huge seasonal traffic spikes in the spring and late summer, the Scotts web sites provide timely, relevant lawn care and gardening content to help consumers create and maintain a more beautiful yard, along with useful product information. In addition, the site offers several interactive tools and a helpful, customized e-mail reminder service to help consumers know what they need to do and when based on where they live.

Scotts elected to migrate its web infrastructure to Rackspace to take advantage of the company's industry-leading reputation for Fanatical Support™, financial stability and growth. By moving to Intensive Hosting, Scotts expects to save about 21 percent in web hosting services over its previous provider.

"The Scotts family of branded sites plays an increasingly integral role in our efforts to expand our leadership position in the lawn and garden category, so we needed a strong hosting provider that could grow with us," said Joel Reimer, manager of interactive marketing at The Scotts Company.

"The migration to Rackspace was extremely smooth and the attention and support we've received has been tremendous. Adding in the fact that we're saving more than 20 percent on hosting costs, it's easy to understand why we're so pleased with our decision to move to Rackspace's Intensive Hosting."

"Industry leading consumer product companies like Scotts rely on their web sites to not only provide product information, but to offer extensive educational value to their customers -- therefore availability is key," said Glenn Reinus, vice president of sales, Rackspace Managed Hosting. "Intensive Hosting provides Scotts with a secure, reliable and scaleable web infrastructure that can support the company's needs - now and in the future."

Intensive Hosting provides Scotts with a fully managed hosting solution built upon multiple Dell PowerEdge servers running Microsoft Windows Server 2003. Scotts is supported by Intensive Hosting's ProActive7™ - the essentials required to ensure the most secure and reliable Web operations in the industry. ProActive7 services include security and patching, managed backup, server administration, trending and reporting, deep monitoring, rapid deployment and scaling, and a managed superstructure - a reliable foundation with a 100 percent network uptime service level agreement.

About The Scotts Company
The Scotts Company is the world's largest marketer of branded consumer lawn and garden products, with a full range of products for professional horticulture as well. The company owns the industry's most recognized brands. In the U.S., the company's Scotts(R), Miracle-Gro(R) and Ortho(R) brands are market leading in their categories, as is the consumer Roundup(R) brand which is marketed in North America and most of Europe exclusively by Scotts and owned by Monsanto. In the U.K., Scotts' brands include Weedol(R) and Pathclear(R), the top-selling consumer herbicides; Evergreen(R), the leading lawn fertilizer line; the Levington(R) line of lawn and garden products; and Miracle-Gro(R).

About Intensive Hosting
Intensive Hosting, a division of Rackspace Managed Hosting, provides enterprise hosting for business critical applications that run on Microsoft technology. Intensive Hosting is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and Microsoft's Hosting Provider of the Year. For more information visit www.intensive.com or call 888-480-6840.

About Rackspace Managed Hosting
Rackspace Managed Hosting™ is a leading provider of managed Web hosting solutions. Founded in 1998, Rackspace offers a wide range of managed services for hosting platforms of all sizes and complexities, including burstable connectivity, 100 percent availability SLA, load balancing, security and patching, advanced storage solutions and disaster recovery. Rackspace has received numerous industry awards for its brand of customer service, known as Fanatical Support™, and was awarded the Frost & Sullivan Customer Value Enhancement (CVE) Award in 2002 and 2003. For more information, visit www.rackspace.com, or call 800-961-2888.