Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rackspace Hires Morgan Stanley to Evaluate Options

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 66 posts

Re: Rackspace Hires Morgan Stanley to Evaluate Options

#21

Post by nickstinemates »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #12

Rackspace's real strength is in their managed services. Either with a managed dedicated server or managed cloud account. The level of support and assistance you get is something that isn't even available from Amazon, Google, etc. It seems, however, that Rackspace is feeling the pressure from both large and small players and some businesses go with Amazon, Google, etc and do all the OS and stack management in house wh…

Given that, maybe one of the big players who want an entry in to the hybrid cloud/enterprise cloud space could use Rackspace's popularity as an entrypoint.

I am a huge fan of Rackspace. They're a bunch great people who sure have a refreshing view on how to take care of their employees, their community, and their visitors.

Re: Rackspace Hires Morgan Stanley to Evaluate Options

#22

Post by Aqueous »

Rackspace should have invested more in PaaS. Its only offering that could it semi-accurately call PaaS, Cloud Sites, is lacking - it supports few runtimes, without things like git-based deployment that would enable it to fit into a CI Pipeline, and it seems intended to host static websites with some dynamic features rather than full-fledged web applications.

I think they are also failing by trying to differentiate themselves in a business that will end up being much like a utility. When your business acts like a utility it's kind of a race to the bottom on prices. Furthermore, in attempting to differentiate themselves, they failed to characterize their primary customer properly - the kind of person who interacts with RackSpace directly is not the kind of person who calls support a whole lot, and yet the quality of their managed support seems to be their sole differentiating factor. My company did take advantage of managed support a few times, and when we did so it was enormously helpful, but it wasn't enough to keep us there when we saw lower-cost offerings elsewhere, because we have enough expertise in-house to solve 99% of problems that come our way.

That said, I own RAX and I would very much like to see the stock stop tanking. An acquisition proposition could send the price back up to near where I bought it - and who knows? Maybe I'll end up trading it in for some more AMZN ( a stock that has also been tanking, by the way.)

Re: Rackspace Hires Morgan Stanley to Evaluate Options

#23

Post by alaskamiller »

nodesocket wrote: post #17
us0r wrote: post #7

You generally don't see announcements like this. Are they having a hard time selling that's why it is out there? You would think some of these companies you read saying things like "we missed the cloud" would jump at this.

Really nobody left, RAX is too big and requires another public company, mainly a blue blood to acquire them. IBM got Softlayer. Google, Amazon, and Microsoft obviously have their own clouds. RedHat has its own PaaS OpenShift. Awkward spot really. Perhaps Facebook wants to join the cloud hosting business, but I doubt it, since they've just coughed up insane amounts of cash with Oculus and whatsapp. Smart play though,…

Facebook has Parse, maybe if that demo matures to having RAX needs then it's worthwhile.

Re: Rackspace Hires Morgan Stanley to Evaluate Options

#25

Post by supercoder »

bruceb wrote: post #2

Contemplating moving from RS to Linode. Anyone done the same? Was it worth it for the savings?

We moved an analytics web service we had on Rackspace to Linode the other day, and the results were fantastic.

We've been able to lower prices by 75% due to actual lower cost as well as requiring fewer machines because of the increased performance.

Re: Rackspace Hires Morgan Stanley to Evaluate Options

#27

Post by old-gregg »

Oculus wrote: post #24

I really hope Mailgun will survive any acquisition or merger Rackspace goes through. I love the quality of service they provide.

Mailgun cofounder checking in: we will, and yes - we will. ;-) Rackspace has been a great home for our team, we continue to grow nicely, we're funded very well and plenty of exciting things are on the roadmap.

Re: Rackspace Hires Morgan Stanley to Evaluate Options

#28

Post by imsofuture »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #12

Rackspace's real strength is in their managed services. Either with a managed dedicated server or managed cloud account. The level of support and assistance you get is something that isn't even available from Amazon, Google, etc. It seems, however, that Rackspace is feeling the pressure from both large and small players and some businesses go with Amazon, Google, etc and do all the OS and stack management in house wh…

Rackspace has been dropping the ball on support, big time, over the past 6-12 months. I'm not sure what's changed, but it's not for the better.

Re: Rackspace Hires Morgan Stanley to Evaluate Options

#29

Post by rdl »

nodesocket wrote: post #17
us0r wrote: post #7

You generally don't see announcements like this. Are they having a hard time selling that's why it is out there? You would think some of these companies you read saying things like "we missed the cloud" would jump at this.

Really nobody left, RAX is too big and requires another public company, mainly a blue blood to acquire them. IBM got Softlayer. Google, Amazon, and Microsoft obviously have their own clouds. RedHat has its own PaaS OpenShift. Awkward spot really. Perhaps Facebook wants to join the cloud hosting business, but I doubt it, since they've just coughed up insane amounts of cash with Oculus and whatsapp. Smart play though,…

HP would be my bet. They have "HP Cloud" which is OpenStack, and they're trying to get more into services in general.

OTOH, kind of a clusterfuck in general, and presumably if HP had any interest they would have just done the deal rather than this customer-terrifying announcement.

Maybe someone from Asia?

Re: Rackspace Hires Morgan Stanley to Evaluate Options

#30

Post by dpcan »

imsofuture wrote: post #28
JohnTHaller wrote: post #12

Rackspace's real strength is in their managed services. Either with a managed dedicated server or managed cloud account. The level of support and assistance you get is something that isn't even available from Amazon, Google, etc. It seems, however, that Rackspace is feeling the pressure from both large and small players and some businesses go with Amazon, Google, etc and do all the OS and stack management in house wh…

Rackspace has been dropping the ball on support, big time , over the past 6-12 months. I'm not sure what's changed, but it's not for the better.

My experience has been the opposite.

Live Chat help seems to fix just about every single problem we have on the fly, and they open Tickets when it gets more complicated, with thorough and fast follow-up.

I have never been happier with my hosting support, and I've used company after company over the years. I've now been with Rackspace (Sites and Cloud Servers specifically) the longest.

I should note that I ended up with them because they took over SliceHost (also great support), so I didn't really "choose" Rackspace based on anything, but loved SliceHost, and the transition was seamless, and the great support seemed to follow.

Post reply on HN