SAN ANTONIO -- Sept. 13, 2004 -- Rackspace Managed Hosting, the fastest-growing managed hosting provider, today announced that it has signed a multi-year agreement with EMI Music North America (EMI). EMI, the world's largest pure music company, has chosen Rackspace's Intensive Hosting(TM) division to support many of its North American Web sites including Blue Note, Capitol Records and Virgin Records.
As more music fans turn to online resources to learn about popular artists and listen to their music, EMI wanted to consolidate its infrastructure from multiple data centers to a single service provider to guarantee reliability and performance. The company was looking for a true managed hosting specialist that could take accountability for ensuring site uptime, in addition to seeking a provider with the systems, processes and people in place to manage such a large project.
"In our search for a managed service provider we evaluated many leading industry players. Rackspace offered us the highly specialized skills and resources in a cost-effective program that was needed to manage our web infrastructure," said Jim Russo, senior director, Network Services, EMI Music North America. "Rackspace's flexible services, support guarantee and Microsoft Gold Certification are why we tapped them to handle the complicated configuration needed to support our sites."
"Managed hosting is our primary focus and enables us to exceed our customers' expectations time and time again," said Glenn Reinus, senior vice president of worldwide sales, Rackspace Managed Hosting. "We go well beyond traditional managed hosting by providing a highly tailored service for enterprises running mission-critical applications."
Rackspace's Intensive Hosting provides EMI with a fully managed hosting solution built upon Dell PowerEdge servers running Microsoft Windows complete with multiple firewalls, load balancers and a Dell/EMC storage area network. EMI's North American Web presence will be supported by Intensive Hosting's ProActive7(TM) -- 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.
Additionally, through Rackspace's close partnership with Dell, EMI has engaged Dell Professional Services to provide Web site application analysis and consolidation support, migration planning, and assessment for EMI's implementation of Microsoft.NET Web services architecture.
About EMI Music
EMI Music is the world's largest pure music company, operating in 50 countries around the world. Its record labels include Angel, Blue Note, Capitol, EMI, EMI Classics, Manhattan, Mute, Parlophone and Virgin.
About Rackspace Managed Hosting
Rackspace Managed Hosting(TM) is the fastest-growing managed hosting provider for enterprise-class web applications. Founded in 1998, Rackspace has built a world-class service organization based on its philosophy of Fanatical Support(TM). The company offers a wide range of managed services for customers of all sizes. Rackspace's Intensive Hosting provides enterprise hosting for business critical applications that run on Microsoft technology. Rackspace is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and Microsoft's Hosting Provider of the Year 2003. For more information, visit www.rackspace.com, or call 800-961-2888.
