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Rackspace Hosting, a provider of hosting and cloud computing, has joined forces with Spiceworks to help small to medium-size businesses manage their Rackspace e-mail hosting services through the free Spiceworks social IT management application. The integrated systems help streamline the jobs of SMB IT professionals by allowing them to monitor and administrate Rackspace cloud e-mail services within the Spiceworks IT management interface, rather than launching a separate portal.
Spiceworks will support the management of Rackspace’s cloud e-mail services with features including e-mail usage, which shows the current status of a company’s Rackspace cloud e-mail services, including the top five e-mail users in the organization, the status of available licenses versus used licenses, and the number of BlackBerry and Active Sync accounts; and account management, which provides users with a full list of the domains they manage with Rackspace, including the total number of mailboxes per domain and e-mail account monitors, which provide alerts when an individual mailbox nears its capacity limit. In addition, resellers can access information on the customer mailbox accounts they manage with Rackspace.
Scott Abel, co-founder and CEO of Spiceworks, said managing IT today means more than just taking care of the computers and software within the four walls of the company. “Already, over 25 percent of SMBs rely on one or more cloud-based services to keep their organizations running, and that number keeps growing,” he said. “By working with Rackspace, we’re simplifying the jobs of IT professionals by giving them the ability to manage both their on-premises technologies and cloud-based services through a single integrated IT management application.”
The relationship with Spiceworks allows Rackspace to extend the functionality and reach of its hosted e-mail services, including Rackspace Email, Microsoft Exchange or a hybrid of both, through the use of Rackspace’s APIs that are available to customers and partners interested in integrating with the Rackspace cloud e-mail platform. For Spiceworks, the integration is part of an ongoing effort to provide SMB IT professionals with free management capabilities for their on-premises, cloud-based and hybrid IT infrastructures.
Rackspace cloud e-mail users will also have the opportunity to collaborate within the Spiceworks social IT management application and community of 950,000 IT professionals who currently use Spiceworks to manage more than 31 million e-mail accounts. Rackspace hosts more than 1.6 million paid e-mail accounts through its e-mail platform that includes Rackspace Email, hosted Microsoft Exchange and a hybrid offering of the two services.
“Both Rackspace and Spiceworks are committed to creating the best experience for our customers and making IT simple and affordable for businesses,” said Jim Curry, Rackspace’s vice president of corporate development. “Through our relationship with Spiceworks, we’ll provide a new avenue for nearly 1 million Spiceworks customers to integrate and manage the Rackspace cloud e-mail platform within their IT.”