The service leader in Cloud computing is recognized for its culture of employee empowerment, and for rewarding ‘Rackers’ with stock options and shares of quarterly profits

SAN ANTONIO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 19, 2012-- Rackspace® Hosting, (NYSE: RAX), the service leader in Cloud computing, today announced it has been ranked 74 on FORTUNE magazine’s annual list of the “100 Best Companies to Work For.” FORTUNE has named Rackspace as one of America’s top workplaces in four of the past five years. The full list and related stories will appear in the February 6 issue of FORTUNE, and today at fortune.com/bestcompanies.

FORTUNE magazine names Rackspace among "100 Best Companies to Work For" (Photo: Business Wire)

“We are honored to once again be included among the great companies on the FORTUNE list, and are thrilled that our Fanatical Support and employee engagement got us here,” said Lanham Napier, CEO of Rackspace. “Our employees — we call them Rackers — make our company great. I want to thank them for keeping the spirit of Fanatical Support alive through their commitment to our customers and to their fellow Rackers. We are determined to preserve and improve our unique company culture, even as we grow.”

At Rackspace, Rackers make Cloud computing easy for businesses of all sizes by providing them with Fanatical Support®. Expert technicians are available to customers 24/7, by phone, email, or chat. In a separate examination, FORTUNE ranked Rackspace 75 on the “Big Pay” List for industry-leading Linux Administrator pay, and for rewarding employees with stock options, a share of quarterly profits, and a 401(k) match of up to 6 percent of pay.

Rackspace’s culture of service and focus on employee engagement gives the company a unique business advantage. It helps to attract customers, please them with Fanatical Support, and turn them into an army of promoters. By the same token, engaged Rackers volunteer their best and recommend the company as a place to work. Approximately 50 percent of new hires at Rackspace come through referrals from current employees. Additionally, it is very difficult to get hired at Rackspace, which hires about 1 percent of its applicants. To help put that in perspective, Harvard University accepts approximately 7 percent of the students that apply for admission.

Underpinning Rackspace’s culture is a complex business process that the company has refined over the past decade. That process involves everything from the way Rackspace recruits and extensively interviews prospective Rackers, to the way it tests for and develops a Racker’s specific strengths, to the way it empowers Rackers to spend time and money on customer issues, to the way it measures employee and customer engagement down to the support-team level, to the way it celebrates and rewards success.

Rackspace continued to expand its global workforce in 2011. Using first-quarter figures — the latest that had been made public when the FORTUNE survey was taken — Rackspace had expanded employment by 37 percent from the same quarter in 2010, to more than 3000 employees. Rackspace currently has more than hundreds of positions open in San Antonio, Austin, San Francisco, and a half-dozen other U.S. cities, as well as in Europe and Asia. Those openings, in departments ranging from software development to tech support and sales, can be seen at http://www.rackertalent.com/

FORTUNE Survey Methodology

To pick the 100 Best Companies to Work For, Fortune partners with the Great Place to Work Institute to conduct the most extensive employee survey in corporate America; 280 firms participated in this year’s survey. More than 246,000 employees at those companies responded to a survey created by the institute, a global research and consulting firm operating in 45 countries around the world. Two-thirds of a company’s score is based on the results of the institute’s Trust Index survey, which is sent to a random sample of employees from each company. The survey asks questions related to their attitudes about management’s credibility, job satisfaction, and camaraderie. The other third is based on responses to the institute’s Culture Audit, which includes detailed questions about pay and benefit programs and a series of open-ended questions about hiring practices, methods of internal communication, training, recognition programs, and diversity efforts. After evaluations are completed, if news about a company comes to light that may significantly damage employees’ faith in management, we may exclude it from the list. Any company that is at least five years old and has more than 1,000 U.S. employees is eligible. For information on how to apply, visit www.greatplacetowork.com. ¹

About Rackspace

Rackspace Hosting (NYSE: RAX) is the service leader in cloud computing, and a founder of OpenStack™, an open source cloud operating system. The San Antonio-based company provides Fanatical Support® to its customers and partners, across a portfolio of IT services, including Managed Hosting and Cloud Computing. Rackspace has been recognized by Bloomberg BusinessWeek as a Top 100 Performing Technology Company and has been featured on FORTUNE’s list of 100 Best Companies to Work For. The company was also positioned in the Leaders Quadrant by Gartner Inc. in the “2010 Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service and Web Hosting.” 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 Hosting 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 about historical results or third party data that may suggest trends for our business or industry; any statements of the plans, strategies, and objectives of Rackspace for future operations or growth; any statements of expectation or belief regarding future events, and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the items mentioned. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the possibility that expected growth or success may not materialize because of Rackspace's failure to sustain a culture that inspires employees to provide Fanatical Support, failure to execute on its operational plans, rapid technological changes that adversely affect the demand for Rackspace products and services, shifts in customer demand, customers' and potential customers' acceptance of Rackspace products and services, and other risks that are described in Rackspace Hosting's Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2011, filed with the SEC on November 9, 2011. 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.

¹ Survey methodology information provided by FORTUNE at www.Fortune.com/bestcompanies.

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Source: Rackspace Hosting

Rackspace Hosting
Natalie Silva, 210-312-1673
natalie.silva@rackspace.com