Rackspace Email & Apps Blog

User Experience Design In ‘The Cloud’…Literally

2009-07-09T20:23:03Z

There we stood with a giant white wall, markers, and notes in-hand ready to begin our sprint planning meeting. This time we weren’t in front of a whiteboard. We were surrounded by clouds. Our User Experience Design team decided to take their sprint planning meeting outdoors.

For those of you not familiar with a sprint planning meeting, it’s a component of an agile development process we use in our R&D department called Scrum. During sprint planning, a team spends several hours together planning/estimating tasks and setting goals for a time-boxed development iteration.

After spending a day together the previous week white water rafting, the team wanted to keep the outdoor adventure theme going. So, we set our eyes on a 7.5 mile hike (round-trip) known as McAfee’s Knob on the Appalachian Trial. Our goal was to hold a sprint planning meeting atop the mountain at 3,197 feet above sea level. What we didn’t anticipate when planning the trek was a last minute forecast calling for rain. A little rain wouldn’t deter us from our team outing. We forged on with our plans and packed a few tarps and some rope for a shelter. As we walked through the office to leave for the hike with rain pouring outside, we received quite a few “you’re crazy” looks from fellow Rackers. Honestly, as I drove to the trail head and the rain continued to pour, it crossed my mind a few times that we may be crazy for going through with the outing.

As we made our way up the trail, the rain continued to come down in buckets. When we reached our conference room (aka McAfee’s Knob) the rain had stopped, however, we were met with a white wall of nothing. Instead of looking out over a beautiful landscape of valleys and mountains, the User Experience Design team was literally in the clouds. Visibility was down to less than 30 feet. Perfect weather for a meeting!

We broke out notes, product backlogs, and post-its and began our planning meeting. With our agenda in hand, the team worked with their product owner to discuss items on the backlog, define requirements/tasks, and set priorities and goals for the coming iteration. While taking pictures of the team working together, I saw a change in the team dynamic outside of what I normally see in a conference room. There was an energy I hadn’t experience before; the team was engaged, having fun, and plowing through the meeting agenda.

A through-hiker tackling 300 miles of the trail came into our “conference room” to take a few pictures of the view. He asked, “What are all of you doing up here?”

We simply answered, “Having a company meeting.”

I can’t repeat his exact words, but he thought it was awesome that our company allowed us to get out of the office and venture into the woods for a meeting. His next question was, “Are you hiring?”

As he asked this question, I realized that what we have at Rackspace is unique.

Rackspace Email & Apps Incident – July 7, 2009

2009-07-07T22:26:11Z

Some of our customers were unable to log into their email accounts between 12:00 pm ET and 12:30pm ET today. We experienced a connectivity issue affecting around 60% of Rackspace Email and 100% of Microsoft Exchange customers. Due to a power interruption at our Dallas (DFW) data center, upstream networking devices lost power. This prevented impacted customers from accessing our server environment.

At NO point was customer data at risk. All incoming and outgoing email was queued and delivered shortly after the issue was resolved. Affected customers may have experienced delays receiving or sending email during this incident. At this time, all Rackspace Email and Microsoft Exchange services have no known issues.

We understand how important email is to your business and apologize to any customers who have been affected by this incident. As a Rackspace customer, you can be confident that the fanatical approach we take to customer support is being poured into diagnosing, fixing, and taking measures to prevent future issues.

For further updates about this incident, visit the main Rackspace blog here.

Scrum @ Rackspace - Sprint Planning

2009-07-06T16:38:29Z

This is where it all begins. Sprint planning is where the team gathers to plan the next sprint’s worth of work. What is a sprint? A sprint is a fixed time period to complete defined tasks. The sprint planning meeting is where a team selects and commits to work for the next sprint.

What does sprint planning look like at Rackspace? It depends on the team and how the team plans. Guidelines exist on how sprint planning meetings should flow; however, there is room for teams to adapt the process to their workflow.

Of the scrum meetings, sprint planning is arguably the most important. This is where the stakeholders gather to discuss the importance of upcoming features and changes within a product line. We discuss the overall plan and dive into individual features, discussing both business and technical details. As you can imagine, this looks very different for our technical writing team than it does for the team that brings you Rackspace Email, and even more different for teams charged with ensuring spam and viruses stay out of your inbox.

Each team has its own set of tools. Some teams use spreadsheets, we’ve tried enterprise software, open source tools, and some teams even use index cards taped to the wall. Depending on team size and topic, these meetings last from a few to eight hours. In the last meeting, the team walked in to the sounds of John Mellencamp’s “Jack & Diane,” doughnuts, and juice. After settling in, we spent over three hours hashing out what the team would be working on for the next 20 days.

After lunch, we reconvened and finished discussing each feature and the team decided what it wanted to work on. Team ownership is encouraged within scrum and sprint planning. Finally, the team discusses any external dependencies, the meeting ends, and I am off to make sure this plan is documented and communicated to interested parties. Tomorrow, the sprint begins.

iPhone Now Natively Supports iCal for Calendar

2009-06-24T15:44:36Z

iPhone versions 3.0 now allows you to access your Rackspace Email calendar through an iCal feed on your iPhone. This new feature will allow you to stay up-to-date by taking your calendar on the move with you wherever you go.

If you need help setting this feature up on your iPhone you can visit our Support Site for setup instructions.

[Case Study] Uforia Regains 400+ Hours of IT Staff Time Annually by Choosing Rackspace

2009-06-23T13:26:54Z

Silicon Valley-based Uforia, founded by online gaming industry veterans, specializes in massively multiplayer online games (MMOG). Uforia creates a unique online gaming experience where gamers play free online games with the ability to enhance their experience. Using micro-transactions to purchase online enhancements, gamers can make characters look different or increase functionality with weapons and accessories.

Due to their corporate structure, Chris Keswani, marketing manager, was relying on hardware and technical support resources based in their Korean offices. When his US-based office needed support with email, they were up against both a 17-hour time difference and communication difficulties between Korean speaking technicians and English speaking users. If Chris needed immediate changes made to his office’s email account at 2pm in the afternoon, the request could take a day or more to be fulfilled. The lack of control over email was becoming a real challenge. Additionally, the email tasks being asked of their highly skilled IT staff were taking their time away from more important projects.

“Our IT staff was spending over 400 hours every year supporting email for our employees,” says Chris “It was costing us time, money, and resources that could have been focused on mission critical projects.”

He’d heard about Rackspace from former colleagues who mentioned that our email solution worked well for them and was easy to use. After he and a few others in his organization evaluated Rackspace, they decided to go with Rackspace Email & Apps because of the affordable cost and the “need for timely support on something as critical as email, made it important to deal with a vendor who had the resources to be responsive.”

Chris now has a new convenience factor with email. He no longer has to wait to make changes or add new mailboxes. When he had questions about using distribution lists, he sent an email to our support department. By the time he got a cup of coffee and returned to his desk, he had an email with the answer he needed. “We work with lots of vendors via email or phone and it typically takes a long time to get answers back,” he says. He’s happy to have email that he doesn’t have to worry about and support that’s always available and responsive to his needs. Email is no longer a challenge and his staff is once again focused on games.

How We Manage Large Datasets with Hadoop

2009-06-22T15:42:08Z

A few weeks ago Robert Scoble stopped by our Blacksburg office and got a chance to interview Stu Hood for Building43.com. Stu has become one of the leading experts on using Hadoop and his use case here at Rackspace was recently published in the new O’Reilly book “Hadoop: The Definitive Guide”. During the interview Stu explains what Hadoop is and how it can be used to help manage large datasets.

Check out the video below to learn more:

My Experience with Rackspace Orientation (aka Rookie-O)

2009-06-19T15:15:22Z

After reading “The Ownership Quotient,” I was reminded of my Rackspace orientation after we were acquired back in 2007. It was essentially our new parent company welcoming us into the family and a chance for us to meet without the digital filter that is the “interweb.”

During orientation, we were split into groups of 8-10 people that would be our “team” for the week. We called ourselves “The Uptime Warriors” or something similarly cheesy. In my team there were a couple of support reps, an account manager, a marketing rep, and some others. I’m a software dev guy, so the group was pretty mixed and represented a nice cross-section of the company. There was an Amazing Race-like game, where each team sent out two people at a time to various parts of the building to search for clues to the next step of a puzzle. This involved finding a particular veteran employee and asking yes or no questions like “Is your favorite color blue?” or “Did you once throw up at a company party?” We had a great time.

After introductions, we took a tour through various departments of the gigantic Rackspace building filled with energetic faces and friendly “Rackers”. I remember hearing the giant gong on the sales floor marking each new sale. They actually have a straight jacket hanging in the support department to recognize the “fanatic” of the month (awarded to the rep that best exemplifies Fanatical Support). Pictures of past fanatics in the jacket lined the top half of the huge wall. Everywhere we looked, the six Rackspace core values were posted on the wall. We played competitive trivia games involving the company policies and were entertained by the lawyers acting out a hilarious courtroom skit about legal issues we should be aware of. Our CEO, Lanham Napier, delivered a spirited rally that got the room riled up, followed by a speech on strength building by Graham Weston, our Chairman.

I remember thinking at one point that someone should record this whole thing to show the amount of attention and energy Rackspace puts into the orientation process. They were gearing these new recruits up to be “fanatics” in the work place; gladiators trained for battle, ready to be sent out into the world to rain fanaticism down on the masses. “The Ownership Quotient”, states that happy employees drive customer satisfaction which drives customer loyalty. That in turn drives profitability and growth. Needless to say, after that week in Texas, I was convinced that Rackspace is one of the best things that could’ve happened to Webmail.us.

Sneak Peek at our Plans

2009-06-18T13:44:59Z

Last week we shared our view of the emerging world of on demand computing with some key partners and customers in San Francisco, CA. We are really excited about the future of what on demand computing presents and we want to share our plans for the future.

You can check out all of the highlights for our company in a blog post Lew Moorman, our Chief Strategy Officer, wrote on The Rackspace Blog.

Below are the specific plans around our division here at Rackspace that Lew shared:

“… We have big plans for our Apps and Email division. We are currently supporting over 1.2 million business class email seats. We continue to build out the best Exchange-IMAP hybrid email system that brings huge saving to our customers. But, we are also moving on to the next core IT problem. We want to help businesses solve their basic storage issues. So in the coming months you will see a few new offers from us. One, an advanced, but low cost mail archiving offer. So whether you are sick of managing large PSTs or need a compliance tool, giving your employees unlimited archiving will soon be an affordable option. Next, we plan to offer a variety of tools to help with basic collaboration and backup. Every business needs a basic fileshare. A centrally managed, infinitely scalable fileshare is on the way. And, want to offer your employees an automated PC backup and web access tool? Stick around.“

Exciting times! Stay tuned.

Is your Browser Ready for Retirement?

2009-06-16T13:58:20Z

When you reach out for support regarding something on your computer, one of the first troubleshooting steps is confirming you have the latest browser version. You’re asked this because there are countless symptoms and effects on your computer from using an outdated browser.

Here are just a few reasons to keep up with the curve:

Internet Use: Believe it or not, most websites are built and maintained based on the latest internet standards and latest version of browsers. The symptoms could be as benign as a logo not showing up or as aggressive as the site not functioning at all.

Backwards compatibility: Not all tech companies pride themselves on taking the time to make sure their product is backwards compatible with other browsers. At Rackspace, our developers spend hours making sure customers can use our product to its full capacity in a variety of browsers. Imagine all the cool features developers could be working on if everyone kept their browsers up to date.

Are you convinced yet? If so, here are links to the latest browser versions for the most popular browsers. Or, you can download them from the “Help” tab in your browser and periodically check for updates.

Firefox: 3.0.11

Internet Explorer: 8

Google and Apple Admit Microsoft Still Matters to Businesses

2009-06-11T14:24:48Z

This week, Google and Apple each announced that they will now offer some type of Microsoft support with their apps. Looks like their “do it our way” approach wasn’t working in corporate America—where Microsoft is still king.

While many businesses are discovering the benefits of innovative, online, hosted applications, many businesses still rely primarily on Microsoft apps and Microsoft Exchange. Users aren’t willing to give up the Microsoft features they’ve come to know—and they shouldn’t have to. Companies like Google and Apple are now realizing that the desktop software isn’t going away any time soon. And since businesses aren’t going to leave Microsoft, you need to provide them with the integration tools they need, if you want them to use your products and services.

At Rackspace, we seek to meet businesses where they are. We realize that most users use Microsoft Outlook, and users must be able to live and work in Outlook, even when they’re away from the office. That’s why all of our services are designed to fully support the Microsoft user, from the office, on the road, and from their mobile device.

Looks like Google and Apple are starting to realize that serving businesses is a bit different from serving consumers.