We should all adopt RackSpace in 2024

Rackspace's Early Days

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Rackspace used to be one of the pioneers of the Cloud Era. If you wanted to host a website in the early days, you needed to have your own server. There were co-location locations, where you could rent the space to place your server, but that was about as far as the service would go. There were no virtualizations meaning you would need to take an entire server or none at all. At very high prices, this was unattainable for most of startups and individuals.

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Transition to Cloud Services

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This all changed with Cloud Pioneers like Rackspace and AWS. In fact, many might be surprised to read that S3 was the first AWS service out there as people thought of the cloud as an image storage platform and not for running servers in the cloud. This all quickly changed as virtualization became more mainstream.

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That being said, the article is about Rackspace and while it had seen  a boom in the early Cloud Days, in more recent times it is in steep decline. The interface has not been updated in over a decade, it has slashed support employees making everything 10X more complicated and the list goes on and on.

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What is more is that it seems to have only legacy clients that will eventually move off of Rackpace (I’d like to be challenged on this one) as there are easier and more cost affordable solutions out there. It seems Rackspace in itself is like an Old PC, one that you want to replace, but since things are running fine you would like to keep.

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Rackspace's Reputation and Challenges

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I would like to argue that when Rackspace started it had one of the best value propositions out there. It was well known in the Startup Scene and had a great reputation with its “Fanatical Support”.  All that has evaporated and so has its stock price. I would argue that it will be difficult, but not impossible to revive Rackspace its business. There are definitely opportunities out there in terms of BlockChain and especially AI.

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I would argue that Rackspace has lost its pace ever since it went public a few years ago. It seems it has lost touch with not only its investors but also with its clients. At the one hand, it tries to replicate AWS in terms of anonymous setup and without any interaction with the customers. That all with a platform that is dated and lacks flexibility. On the other hand, its price levels are premium, but its once premium customer support has been removed due to cost reductions.

While, I am frustrated with the current state of Rackspace as some of my clients are using it, I do see a future for the company. It is time that a good Private Equity Company takes over the company and place a vision for the company and makes the right investments.

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Rackspace can still turn around the time and this is the time to do it with new technologies upcoming in the BlockChain and especially AI space. It should leverage its brand and come up with a strategy to bring back its hay days.  The early years of this decade show great opportunity for the company to be back on the forefront of where it once was.

For now, it seems that Rackspace is losing against the competition. Seems its management and employees are okay with the status quo and that it is slowly dying. It would be great to see this once loved company thrive and there are definitely ways to get out of the Ditch.

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If nothing else works we should all adopt a little bit of Rackspace by doing the biggest De Clouding ever where RackSpace auctions off its servers and we will be using that in our houses as backup and to host our images. The servers Rackspace is using would still allow us to run home (and small office) servers and that will in turn safe us Expensive Cloud Services.

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That being said, one can argue that Rackspace has not collapsed given that its revenues have doubled in the last 10 years. In fact, it has exceeded investor expectations. So, it is merely that it is no longer on the forefront of technology. Same as intel has clearly missed the boat on AI.

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I would argue that Rackspace is too expensive and that there are better alternatives available. If you need an honest opinion on your cloud setup, don’t hesitate to reach out us as we are able to optimize your Cloud Investments and often than not work cost neutral.

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