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  • IBM Invests $1B to Deliver Unique Platform-as-a-Service Capabilities to Connect Enterprise Data and Applications to the Cloud

    Delivers Enterprise Software Capabilities – Integration, Security, Analytics, Commerce to Accelerate New Era of Hybrid Clouds

    ARMONK, N.Y. and LAS VEGAS, Feb. 24, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a unique new development environment and capabilities-as-a-service to help clients and developers speed the adoption of “hybrid” clouds, which have the potential to usher in a new era of innovation across the enterprise. As part of its initiative, IBM has invested more than $1 billion for software cloud development and is launching new capabilities running on SoftLayer.

    IBM Invests $1B to Deliver Unique Platform-as-a-service Capabilities

    With today’s news, IBM is addressing three fundamental issues to help speed the adoption of hybrid clouds.

    1)   Enabling enterprise developers for the cloud: According to Evans Data, there are more than 18 million software developers worldwide yet less than 25 percent are developing for the cloud today [1]. As the industry moves to the cloud era, millions of developers are looking to access tools and services that will enable them to leverage this fast-emerging opportunity.

    2)   Integrating across enterprise environments: Enterprises are looking to innovate and drive significant value in a new era of hybrid clouds, which link systems of engagement — built on mobile and social technologies and where consumers are engaging with organizations — with systems of record where data and transactions are processed.

    3)   An open ecosystem and platform for development that accelerates innovation and fosters growth: Developers are looking for a dynamic application development environment to support the cloud era. A new development platform should be open and flexible and make it easier for corporate developers and independent companies alike to create applications and connect them to existing computing systems.

    In response to these market dynamics, today IBM is announcing three new sets of cloud capabilities:

    1)     IBM is opening its extensive enterprise software portfolio to the cloud and launching an open beta codenamed BlueMix™, a new platform-as-service (PaaS) that combines the strength of IBM software, third-party and open technologies. BlueMix provides DevOps in the cloud — an open, integrated development experience that scales. DevOps services help developers, independent firms and enterprise teams get started to build enterprise applications more quickly and effectively. DevOps services enable developers to focus on continuously delivering new functions by learning from their users. Today, IBM also announced a definitive agreement to acquire Boston, MA-based Cloudant, Inc., a privately held database-as-a-service (DBaaS) provider that enables developers to easily and quickly create next generation mobile and web apps.  Cloudant will extend IBM’s Big Data and Analytics, Cloud Computing and Mobile offerings and become an essential component of BlueMix.

    2)     IBM is bringing its middleware portfolio, such as WebSphere, to SoftLayer through pre-defined software “patterns” to easily extend existing applications to the cloud. With more than 200 application and middleware patterns available from IBM and IBM Business Partners, the IBM Software Patterns are differentiated in that they enable application portability across a hybrid cloud environment, providing the flexibility to deploy applications and middleware on-premise or off-premise, simplifying hybrid IT management.

    3)     IBM continues to invest in and expand the services running on SoftLayer, includingDevOps to provide essential capabilities to plan, develop, test, deploy and monitor applications, andsystems management as a service, extending its industry leading solutions to the Cloud. And IBM today announced that it is integrating its Power Systems into its SoftLayer cloud infrastructure to deliver a level and breadth of infrastructure services beyond what has traditionally been available over the cloud.

    “IBM is ushering in a bold new era of innovation by partnering with developers in an open environment to accelerate the emerging world of hybrid cloud computing,” said Robert LeBlanc, IBM Senior Vice President, Software and Cloud Solutions. “We are combining the strength of our developer ecosystem with the depth of subject matter expertise in domains such as mobile, Big Data and DevOps, to build a scalable model that easily spans from a single developer to global teams. Today’s announcement is another significant move in extending true cloud integration — not just to existing data and transaction services but to a new class of emerging applications.”

    IBM Launches Open Beta of Codename: BlueMix, Redefining Cloud Development
    This new application development environment delivers the speed and flexibility of a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) to allow developers to more quickly compose and build enterprise-grade applications for the cloud era by providing access to IBM’s vast software portfolio as composable services.

    This PaaS/services combination, built on open standards and taking advantage of Cloud Foundry, enables developers to avoid vendor lock-in while leveraging their existing application development assets and skills, which is essential for building hybrid clouds. IBM is providing developers an open, flexible cloud environment connecting the enterprise and born-on-the-web developers using their choice of tools, whether IBM, third-party, or open technologies, in a scalable environment.

    Building on more than 20 years of commitment and leadership in driving open standards, IBM also announced it will serve as a founding member of the Cloud Foundry Foundation. The goal of this foundation is to create and develop open source platform-as-a-service ecosystems.

    As part of BlueMix, IBM is building a lineup of developer services focused on mobile, web apps, integration, DevOps and data management. In addition, IBM is continuing to make available to developers its suites of business applications (SaaS) as composable API-based services, such as Watson, commerce, security, analytics, marketing and others. As an example, using BlueMix, developers can leverage middleware services to build a new sales app that can provide retail associates with access to inventory management information from systems of record at the time of customer engagement.

    BlueMix DevOps services provide an integrated experience to help developers accelerate time to market and improve quality. DevOps includes services to store and manage code (using the popular Git repository), a built-in Web integrated development environment (IDE), and Eclipse and Visual Studio integrations to let developers use whichever environment they prefer.  DevOps Services enable agile planning and tracking to share work and collaborate across team members, as well as application deployment automation to streamline the delivery of new function, mobile quality, and performance monitoring to help learn and iterate more quickly. By integrating across the software delivery lifecycle, DevOps services help developers move faster from an idea to an application that meets users’ needs.

    In the automotive industry connected vehicles will rely on a strong IT structure and the cloud has become increasingly important in this area. The international automotive supplier Continental is using the BlueMix platform to offer cloud-based connected solutions that will pave the way for Automated Driving.

    “The investment in IBM BlueMix addresses a much needed gap for Continental that allows us to move more quickly through the cloud in the development of our connected solutions. The automobile industry is following the same trajectory as other devices becoming connected and we see great opportunity for exciting connected features that will transform the future of mobility using the BlueMix platform to create value for motorists and make driving safer, more comfortable and efficient,” said Brian Droessler, Vice President, Software and Connected Solutions, Continental Automotive Systems.

    IBM Brings Its Middleware to SoftLayer with IBM Software Patterns
    IBM is bringing its extensive middleware portfolio to SoftLayer with IBM Software Patterns. Organizations can maximize existing application investments using these pre-defined patterns that are created to capture the many steps for deploying and managing an application.

    IBM Software Patterns are portable between on-premise and off-premise environments, providing the flexibility to deploy applications and middleware to meet dynamic business requirements. Available through the PureApplication Service on SoftLayer beta, IBM Software Patterns open up new possibilities to simplify common IT processes such as DevOps. IT teams can quickly create off-premise environments in the cloud to complete tasks such as application testing and quality assurance, then transfer the applications back to an on-premise production environment. Additionally developers can create their own patterns – writing them once and deploying them on-premise or off-premise – using IBM tools and services, or select from more than 200 Software Patterns provided by IBM and IBM Business Partners ranging from traditional ERP/CRM and Business Intelligence to Web and mobile applications.

    For example, independent software vendor (ISV) Exigen Insurance Solutions has created an application pattern for its insurance industry solution using the IBM Web Application middleware pattern.  With the PureApplication Service on SoftLayer, Exigen can now address new market segments offering clients the option to develop and run Exigen core systems across a hybrid cloud environment making it easier for clients to optimize total costs.

    Additional Services Running on SoftLayer
    IBM is making SoftLayer the foundation of its cloud portfolio.  Building on the company’s recent $1.2 billioninvestment to expand SoftLayer’s global footprint with new data centers worldwide, IBM is announcing additional new cloud services on SoftLayer.

    • IBM Systems Management as a Service – IBM is addressing the critical needs of IT operations by extending its industry leading service management solutions to the Cloud. Built on decades of experience in managing some of the most scalable IT systems in the world, IBM is introducing a comprehensive set of IT management solutions. With just a few clicks, IT practitioners can try and buy systems management as-a-service solutions providing instant insights and value. With these new solutions, IBM provides IT practitioners with the ability to optimize how they manage mixed workloads — both cloud and on-prem — along with connected devices and business applications across any given organization. The new offerings are available both as-a-service hosted on IBM SoftLayer and as on-premise installed software, providing clients with deployment and management choice and flexibility.
    • Power on SoftLayer – Beginning next quarter and continuing over time, SoftLayer’s first service built on Power Systems will be IBM Watson solutions, followed by additional offerings leveraging Power Systems’ advantages of optimization for data and analytics performance. The preliminary set of planned offerings includes:
      • Watson solutions  — includes Watson Discovery Advisor, Watson Engagement Advisor and The Watson Development Cloud, a platform as a service that contains the technology, tools, SDKs and APIs that enable third parties to design, develop and deploy cognitive applications.
      • Software as a Service — includes a wide range of data services optimized on Power Systems includingIBM DB2 BLU and IBM Cognos analytics solutions.
      • Infrastructure as a Service — bare metal Power Systems will be offered to clients as an on-demand infrastructure platform.
    • IBM Platform Computing Cloud Service on SoftLayer – IBM also announced Platform LSF and Platform Symphony software delivered as a service for technical computing and analytics workloads running on SoftLayer.

    About IBM Cloud Computing
    IBM has helped more than 30,000 clients around the world with 40,000 industry experts around cloud engagements. Today, IBM has 100+ cloud SaaS solutions, thousands of experts with deep industry knowledge helping clients transform and a network of 40 data centers worldwide.  Since 2007, IBM has invested more than $7 billion in 16 acquisitions to accelerate its cloud initiatives and build a high value cloud portfolio. IBM holds 1,560 cloud patents focused on driving innovation. In fact, IBM for the 21st consecutive year topped the annual list of US patent leaders. IBM processes more the 5.5M client transactions daily through IBM’s public cloud. For more information about cloud offerings from IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com/cloud. Follow us on Twitter at @IBMcloud and on our blog at http://www.thoughtsoncloud.com.  Join the conversation #ibmcloud. To learn more about today’s news please read Smarter Planet blog.

    [1] Source: Evans Data Developer Population and Demographics Study, 2013.

  • CA Technologies Launches Industry’s First Management Cloud for Mobility

    Solutions to Secure the Mobile Enterprise and Accelerate Innovation to Capture Growth in the Global Mobile Economy

    Mobile World Congress 2014

    BARCELONA, Spain–()–MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS– Today at Mobile World Congress, CA Technologies (NASDAQ:CA) launched the industry’s first, comprehensive Management Cloud for Mobility. Delivered as a cloud service, this portfolio enables enterprises to manage, secure and grow their business, increase productivity and deliver an enhanced mobile experience.

    “The growth of mobile devices and apps in the enterprise is blurring the lines between personal and corporate data and leading to new challenges for enterprises”

    “The explosion of new devices, applications, content and transactions in the mobile environment has opened new challenges for enterprises of all sizes, worldwide. The CA Management Cloud for Mobility will help enterprises transform the challenges of the new mobile economy into significant opportunity,” said Ram Varadarajan, general manager, New Business Innovation, CA Technologies. “With solutions that power innovation, drive productivity and accelerate the development of new mobile applications and offerings, CA is extending its leadership in IT management to help businesses capitalize on the next technological and business shift – mobility.”

    The portfolio includes three complementary solution suites: Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) to manage and secure mobile devices, applications and content; Mobile DevOps to accelerate application development and deployment; andEnterprise Internet of Things (IoT) to enable the adoption of internet-connected devices. The complete EMM suite and key products of the Mobile DevOps suite are available for purchase. Customers have the choice and flexibility to deploy the complete portfolio of solutions or individual components, with the ability to customize and scale cost effectively.

    This CA Management Cloud for Mobility is powered by Smart Containerization™ technology. Unlike traditional device-focused mobility management techniques, Smart Containerization™ allows enterprises to manage the security, performance, compliance and support characteristics of the device, application, content or email while preserving the quality of the mobile user experience.

    “The growth of mobile devices and apps in the enterprise is blurring the lines between personal and corporate data and leading to new challenges for enterprises,” said Chris Hazelton, Research Director, Mobile & Wireless, 451 Research. “The EMM space is evolving as companies are looking for more complete offerings that support customers and productive mobile employees. Secure container technologies must provide enterprise scalability and comprehensive security across app development, delivery and support, all while preserving the familiar native look and feel of nearly any mobile device an employee chooses to carry.”

    Enable Enterprise Mobility Management

    The EMM suite enables enterprises to drive employee productivity and satisfaction by simplifying the management and security of devices, applications, content and email.

    The four products within the EMM suite available for purchase are:

    • New CA Mobile Application Management (CA MAM): Provides security, management and control of mobile applications with fine-grained access control polices for mobile applications.
    • New CA Mobile Content Management (CA MCM): Enables secure content access and collaboration through file synchronization, access to enterprise content repositories and cloud store integration made available to the end user through policy-based mobile access.
    • New CA Mobile Email Management (CA MEM): Provides users with secure access to their corporate email and ensures group and policy-based controls to protect sensitive email content.
    • CA Mobile Device Management (CA MDM): Delivers comprehensive capabilities to provision, secure and manage mobile devices, and deploy mobile applications automatically or through an enterprise app store.

    Accelerate Mobile Application Delivery

    The Mobile DevOps suite helps enterprises accelerate the delivery of user-experience-focused mobile applications. It enables enterprises to achieve faster time to market by accelerating continuous application delivery while enhancing security. Working across multiple development tools, languages and methodologies, Mobile DevOps makes it easy to build and test rich API-based mobile applications, gain deep insights into performance, user experience, crash and log analytics, and automate and support these mobile applications when deployed onto millions of devices.

    The four products within the Mobile DevOps suite available for purchase are:

    • New CA Layer 7 API Portal: Simplifies publishing APIs, onboarding developers, and streamlines enterprises’ ability to rapidly develop applications based on these APIs.
    • New CA Layer 7 Mobile Access Gateway: Delivers unified access across web and mobile, authenticates users based on risk levels and protects the datacenter against rogue applications.
    • CA LISA Test for Mobile: Offers mobile and web developers global access to a comprehensive platform that simulates an exhaustive list of user scenarios for testing.
    • CA LISA Service Virtualization: Allows customers to test new mobile applications in simulated environments.

    Additional Mobile DevOps capabilities will be available in the next few months, including mobile APM, crash and log analytics, user experience analytics and remote application support.

    According to a Forrester Research report, “Development shops are just starting to grapple with the biggest change to system architecture since the rise of client/server in the early 1990s: omnichannel clients deployed on smartphones, tablets, and other connected devices. The mobilefirst focus these organizations adopt, forces application architects to think differently about the APIs clients use to access data and functionality.”*

    Manage and Grow in the Ubiquitously-Connected Tomorrow

    Enterprise IoT will enable businesses to deploy internet-connected devices, and manage and secure billions of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) interactions. Ubiquitous connectivity, advancements in big data analytics and the ability to embed computing into everything have led to the rise of the IoT phenomenon. The Enterprise IoT suite will provide enterprises a secure foundation to extend mobility with IoT infrastructure to achieve business efficiencies.

    These Mobility offerings from CA are further supported by significant advances in the CA Security portfolio. These include new and updated identity-based solutions that help customers secure their growing portfolio of cloud services and mobile applications.

    For more information on the various solutions supporting mobility from CA Technologies, please visit: http://www.ca.com/us/mobility.aspx.

    *The Forrester Wave™: API Management Platforms, Q1 2013, Forrester Research, Inc., February 5, 2013.

    About CA Technologies

    CA Technologies (NASDAQ: CA) provides IT management solutions that help customers manage and secure complex IT environments to support agile business services. Organizations leverage CA Technologies software and SaaS solutions to accelerate innovation, transform infrastructure and secure data and identities, from the data center to the cloud. Learn more about CA Technologies at www.ca.com.

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    Legal Notices

    Copyright © 2014 CA. All Rights Reserved. One CA Plaza, Islandia, N.Y. 11749. All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.

  • JumpCloud Soars into Commercial Availability

    Extensive Development and Customer Feedback Results in Best in Class Automated Server Management Solution

    BOULDER, Colo.–()–JumpCloud™, the leading automated server management tool for DevOps and IT pros, today announced the general commercial availability of its automated server management solution. JumpCloud launched its automated server management solution last September at the prestigious TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco event as a Startup Battlefield finalist. Since that time, hundreds of organizations have deployed JumpCloud, and requests for additional features have helped to iterate, refine, and optimize the solution for DevOps and IT professionals.

    “JumpCloud has had a major impact on our daily routine. After automating with JumpCloud, we don’t have to spend cycles on many of our daily manual server management tasks such as managing users and tracking privileged commands”

    “The cloud’s elasticity and agility has enabled several new operational models such as DevOps, an IT model that blurs the lines between development and IT operations, as well as consolidates historically segregated management functions to improve efficiency and responsiveness,” said Rich Mogull, CEO of Securosis, in What CISOs Need to Know About Cloud Computing.

    JumpCloud’s mission is to automate the manual, tedious tasks of managing servers so that DevOps and IT pros can focus on what makes their business tick: innovation. JumpCloud has built a platform to execute these tasks, including SSH/privileged user management, admin activity monitoring, patch detection, and compliance. JumpCloud supports servers in the cloud, data center, colo, or hosted as VMs.

    JumpCloud customers can now choose to extend their access to critical server management functionality for as little as $10 per month per server, as well as benefit from an hourly pricing rate per server should that be a better match for their scalable infrastructure. As part of the commercial plans, JumpCloud customers receive access to its best-in-class functionality, extended data retention, and phone support.

    “JumpCloud has had a major impact on our daily routine. After automating with JumpCloud, we don’t have to spend cycles on many of our daily manual server management tasks such as managing users and tracking privileged commands,” said Scott Brown, CEO of Bounce.IO. “JumpCloud is simple and efficient, yet powerful. And, because we can focus on delivering our product and not on tedious maintenance tasks, its return on investment was almost immediate.”

    “Commercially releasing JumpCloud has meant countless hours of team effort interacting with amazing customers, learning about their problems, and the best ways to solve them. I’m incredibly proud of our team’s results and honored to work with such great customers,” said Rajat Bhargava, President & CEO, JumpCloud. “JumpCloud is solving an incredibly difficult and important problem: how to enable companies to innovate faster.”

    JumpCloud is available immediately. For a free 30-day trial, sign-up at www.jumpcloud.com.

    About JumpCloud

    JumpCloud automates manual, tedious server-management tasks from the cloud for DevOps and IT pros. Complementary to and integrated with Chef and Puppet, JumpCloud picks up where they leave off by automating management of users, patches, security, and compliance. JumpCloud returns days to DevOps and IT admins’ lives while increasing security. An automated SaaS-based offering, JumpCloud installs in seconds and deploys on physical, virtual, or cloud servers. For more information visitJumpCloud.com.

  • Ravello Systems Powers DevOps with Extreme Continuous Integration on Clones of Production Applications in the Cloud

    Ravello adds new Apache Maven plug-in and announces availability of Ruby and Python bindings for integration with build automation tools.

     

    PALO ALTO, Calif. – February 12, 2014 – Ravello Systems, the industry’s first Cloud Application Hypervisor provider, today announced it has added new plug-ins and RESTful APIs to provision entire multi-virtual machine environments, along with networking and storage, in the cloud. Ravello has added a new Apache Maven plug-in, and programming language bindings for Ruby and Python, with support for Continuous Integration (CI) systems including Jenkins, Bamboo, and Teamcity. With one API call, developers can instantly provision a complete clone of their existing on-premise production application and deploy it in the public cloud.

    Ravello enables CI on production replicas in the cloud

    To achieve successful agile development and test processes, enterprises are quickly adopting DevOps principles, and using CI is a key practice. The goal with CI is to get as reliable feedback as quickly as possible, resulting in higher quality software delivered faster. However, most DevOps practitioners encounter constraints when implementing CI due to (1) difficulties in automating the infrastructure, making it problematic to provision clones of multi-tier production applications, and (2) capacity restraints in the datacenter, making it impossible to deploy these clones for every code commit. Automating CI processes can be very painful, time-consuming and fraught with configuration nightmares.

    With Apache Maven, the vastly popular build automation tool, developers are able to manage a project’s build, deployment, testing, reporting and documentation from a central repository. Recognizing the value of Maven as a build automation tool, the Ravello Maven plug-in is designed to help integrate Maven-based projects with Ravello Systems’ rich APIs. This integration makes it easier to automatically configure the build, testing and deployment processes, resulting in smoother operations.

    Ravello’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering allows enterprises to spin up clones of their existing multi-tier enterprise applications in the public cloud – without any changes to the virtual machines (VMs), networking or storage. With the addition of a new Maven plug-in and the availability of Ruby and Python bindings for integration with other build automation tools, Ravello now enables extreme CI on production clones in the cloud. Now developers and test engineers can use Ravello’s APIs to:

    • Provision the entire environment;
    • Start and stop applications as needed;
    • Automatically execute the tests and either shut down to release resources once the test has passed, or save the state if an issue needs to be debugged;
    • Easily integrate with CI servers such as Jenkins, Bamboo or Teamcity.

    All this can be done right from the integrated development environment (IDE). Now each code commit can be tested on a clone of production in the cloud for instant and accurate feedback.

    “The public cloud with its infinite capacity is very promising for continuous integration, but it’s an inherently different environment than what you have on premise,” said Gil Hoffer, VP of R&D, Ravello Systems. “Your application might have multiple subnets, multiple network cards per server and specific storage requirements. With Ravello we abstract away the differences between the private and public clouds, and have built-in automation for provisioning and deploying those multi-tier applications in the cloud.”

    Supporting Resources

    Follow Ravello Systems on the Web at:

    About Ravello Systems
    Founded in 2011, Ravello Systems delivers a software-as-a-service that enables developers, devops and IT to use the unlimited resources of the public cloud to develop and test their on-premise applications. Powered by the industry’s first Cloud Application Hypervisor, Ravello enables enterprises to encapsulate their multi-tier applications and run them anywhere – on-premise or in any cloud – without making any changes whatsoever, and thereby implement a true hybrid cloud. Ravello Systems is backed by top tier VCs including Sequoia Capital, Norwest Venture Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners. For more information, visit www.ravellosystems.com.

  • Over 63% of Active Cloud Developers Release Updates at Least Once a Week, 25% Release Daily Updates

    Cloud Enables Continuous Delivery and DevOps, According to New Evans Data Survey of Cloud Developers

    SANTA CRUZ, CA. January 21, 2014 Cloud is accelerating the implementation of a rapid continuous delivery model, with 25.9% of developers active in Cloud development releasing updates or new versions at least once a day, and 63.3% releasing at least once a week, as Evans Data’s new Cloud Development Survey shows. The survey, conducted in November – December 2013 with 436 active Cloud developers also showed that 51% feel that Cloud computing in general will improve coordination between development and operations, which will also help to enable continuous delivery.

    However, opinions and practices diverge across segments. ISVs are most likely to release software quickly, with 45.7% releasing updates daily and 73.6% making updates at least weekly; whereas only 12.9% of internal corporate enterprise developers make daily releases and 66.4% make them at least once per week.

    The two groups also have different opinions about Cloud and DevOps: 76.6% of ISVs think Cloud will make coordination between Development and Operations better and only 9.9% think it will make it worse, but developers working in an internal corporate enterprise are evenly split with 35% thinking Cloud will make coordination better and 35.9% thinking it will make it worse. Additionally another 22.3% of internal developers think Cloud will erode the need for Operations altogether.

    “There are obvious differences between developer segments,” said Janel Garvin, Evans Data CEO. “ISVs were Agile early adopters and today commercial apps have to be updated frequently in order to stay competitive, whereas internal corporate development is where a continuous delivery and DevOps model would be the most beneficial, and yet that’s where there is the most resistance.”

    Evans Data’s Cloud Development Survey has been conducted every six months for the last 5 years. The current survey report contains over 200 pages of data on such topics as Cloud Configurations, Cloud Integrations, Cloud as a Development and Test Platform, Development Tools in the Cloud, Cloud and Mobility, Cloud Storage, Runtimes and Frameworks, Security and Compliance, and more.

    See complete Table of Contents here: Table of Contents

    About Evans Data Corporation

    Evans Data Corporation provides regularly updated IT industry market intelligence based on in-depth surveys of the global developer population. Evans’ syndicated research includes surveys focused on developers in a wide variety of subjects.

    Copyright 2014 Evans Data Corporation. All other company names, products and services mentioned in this document are the trademarks and property of their respective owners.

  • Rackspace Hosting Reports Fourth Quarter 2013 Results

    Rackspace announced it is extending its Fanatical Support® to help customers automate their cloud infrastructure with a new managed support service for DevOps tools. The new DevOps Automation Service will help developers automate the process of deploying and scaling hybrid cloud infrastructure for fast-growing applications, while advancing the adoption of the DevOps methodology among software and IT teams.

    SAN ANTONIO–()–Rackspace® Hosting, Inc. (NYSE: RAX), the open cloud company, announced financial results for the quarter ended December 31, 2013.

    Net revenue for the fourth quarter of 2013 was $408 million, up 5.0% from the previous quarter and up 16% from the fourth quarter of 2012. Net revenue for the fourth quarter of 2013 was positively impacted by currency exchange rates when compared to the previous quarter by $4.2 million and positively impacted when compared to the fourth quarter of 2012 by $0.8 million.

    Total server count increased to 103,886, up from 101,967 servers at the end of the previous quarter.

    Adjusted EBITDA(1) for the quarter was $132 million, a 5.2% increase compared to the third quarter of 2013 and a 2% increase compared to the fourth quarter of 2012. The Adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter was 32.4% compared to 32.3% in the previous quarter and 36.8% in the fourth quarter of 2012.

    Consistent with prior periods, Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA margin were negatively impacted by a non-cash charge relating to data center operating leases. During the fourth quarter of 2013, the non-cash data center lease charge was $2.3 million, compared to $3.8 million in the previous quarter and $2.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2012.

    Net income was $21 million for the quarter, up 27.5% from the previous quarter and down 30% from the fourth quarter of 2012. Net income margin for the quarter was 5.1% compared to 4.2% for the previous quarter and 8.5% in the fourth quarter of 2012.

    Cash flow from operating activities was $110 million for the fourth quarter of 2013. Capital expenditures were $116 million, including $65 million for purchases of customer gear, $23 million for data center build outs, $8 million for office build outs and $20 million for capitalized software and other projects.

    Adjusted Free Cash Flow(1) for the quarter was $15 million. Return on Capital(1) was 9.6%, compared to 8.0% in the prior quarter and 16.9% in the fourth quarter of 2012. Average monthly revenue per server was $1,322, compared to $1,290 in the prior quarter and $1,310 in the fourth quarter of 2012.

    At the end of the fourth quarter of 2013, cash and cash equivalents were $260 million, and debt including capital lease obligations totaled $58 million.

    On a worldwide basis, Rackspace employed 5,651 Rackers as of December 31, 2013, up from 5,450 in the previous quarter.

    “With the leadership team and strategy we have in place, and the powerful position that we’ve established in the marketplace, I’m confident that we can make 2014 one of the best years in Rackspace history. In 2014, we will take the next step to carve out our differentiated position and help the next adoption wave of customers reach a hybrid cloud world. We will continue to invest in our portfolio of services and reinforce our differentiation in the market. We will win as we always have — one delighted customer at a time,” said Graham Weston, Chairman and CEO.

    Rackspace Developments and Business Highlights

    • Rackspace announced that Taylor Rhodes, the company’s Chief Customer Officer (CCO), has been appointed President, effective immediately. Mr. Rhodes joined Rackspace in 2007 and has served in a variety of leadership positions within the company. Prior to his role as CCO, Mr. Rhodes served as Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Rackspace International. In his various roles, Mr. Rhodes has guided the company towards its mission of bringing the power of Rackspace’s hybrid cloud portfolio, backed by Fanatical Support®, to global markets. Additionally, he has played an integral role in evolving Fanatical Support for the benefit of customers worldwide, which has enabled Rackspace to advance its position as the service leader in the industry.
    • Rackspace announced it has been ranked 29 on the 2014 FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For® list. FORTUNE has named Rackspace as one of America’s top workplaces in six of the past seven years. Rackspace was selected among hundreds of companies vying for a place on the list this year. Great Place to Work® chose Rackspace using its unique methodology based on five dimensions: credibility, respect, fairness, pride and camaraderie.
    • Rackspace announced it is extending its Fanatical Support® to help customers automate their cloud infrastructure with a new managed support service for DevOps tools. The new DevOps Automation Service will help developers automate the process of deploying and scaling hybrid cloud infrastructure for fast-growing applications, while advancing the adoption of the DevOps methodology among software and IT teams.
    • Rackspace announced it has given nearly £250,000 worth of cloud hosting services and support for free to 300 members of the Rackspace Startup Programme since it started in the UK six months ago. This is in addition to many other benefits members have received, such as mentoring, expert technical advice and access to networking events. All of these benefits are helping power new UK businesses to succeed and are provided by Rackspace through over 50 partners, including premier incubators, accelerators, associations and investors. The high profile partners involved in the Rackspace Startup Programme include Techstars, Dreamstake, Wayra, Seedcamp, Oxygen Accelerator and Accelerator Academy. Partners located outside of London – ensuring program access for startups throughout the UK – include ignite100 in Newcastle, dotForge in Sheffield and four organizations in Ireland: Wayra, NDRC, Propeller Venture Accelerator and Ustart.

    Conference Call and Webcast

    Management will host a conference call to discuss the results starting today at 4:30 p.m. ET.

    To access the conference call, please dial 800-946-0712 from the United States and Canada or dial 719-325-2328 from abroad and reference pass code 2801570. A live webcast and a replay of the conference call will be available on Rackspace’s website, located at http://ir.rackspace.com.

    About Rackspace

    Rackspace (NYSE: RAX) is the global leader in hybrid cloud and founder of OpenStack®, the open-source operating system for the cloud. Hundreds of thousands of customers look to Rackspace to deliver the best-fit infrastructure for their IT needs, leveraging a product portfolio that allows workloads to run where they perform best—whether on the public cloud, private cloud, dedicated servers, or a combination of platforms. The company’s award-winning Fanatical Support helps customers successfully architect, deploy and run their most critical applications. Headquartered in San Antonio, TX, Rackspace operates data centers on four continents. Rackspace is featured on Fortune’s list of 100 Best Companies to Work For. For more information, visit www.rackspace.com.

    Forward-Looking Statements

    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 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 anticipated operational and financial benefits from Rackspace strategies related to additions or changes in leadership, the success of leadership transition, company growth or success of new operational initiatives, any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the integration and effectiveness of new leadership into the Rackspace culture and business operations, instability or downturns in the economy, the effectiveness of managing company growth, infrastructure failures and other risks that are described in Rackspace Hosting’s Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2013, filed with the SEC on November 12, 2013. 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.