CenturyLink Looks At Buying Rackspace

Rambo Tribble writes Telecom player CenturyLink is reported to be considering the acquisition of server and cloud provider Rackspace. From the article: "The deal would add more Internet and cloud services to CenturyLink's roster of phone and data communications packages, helping it better compete against Amazon.com in Web-based services. Microsoft Corp. and Google are also vying for business as companies transition from owning and operating servers to renting space in the cloud."

Head in the clouds

[penguinoid]

Am I the only one concerned about all these supposedly intelligent people walking about with their heads in the cloud?

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[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I'm concerned...that's NOT where they've got their heads... >;-D

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[wwphx]

Another case of cranial/rectal inversion, eh?

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[nucrash]

When hearing about the cloud, I tend to use the early shore based ocean analogy of what made the early oceans and oceans today cloudy. Clouds in the water were generally masses of spermatozoa looking for an egg to fertilize. So when someone references head in clouds, I can't help but think of this as a potential bukake party.

On a serious note, I have a serious problem with an ISP trying to provide cloud services and vice-versa. This is the same reason I take issue with Google Fiber. I love the speed of

I REALLY hope not.

[Anonymous Coward]

as someone who remembers the qwest days and the centurylink that came after, I can't imagine a more ridiculous mismatch of cultures of customer service.

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[linuxgurugamer]

This will merely accelerate our move away from Rackspace.

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[PoopMonkey]

Why are you still with them? Shitty company that has no interest in cleaning up their network.

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[bluec]

Expand please.

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[gandhi_2]

you must be talking about OVH and kimsufi.

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[luminousone11]

Even a James bond villain would question of the ethics of CenturyLink.

And where are they getting the money?, They where at last I counted over $20 billion dollars in the hole, And Rackspace isn't large enough to be used as part of their leveraged buyout "WorldCom" esk scam.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I hope this doesn't happen. Rackspace is a good company with decent CS, and they treat their employees fairly decently. They even have one of the faster mirror sites.

I don't know about CenturyLink, but my fear is that Rackspace gets taken over, all the clued L1/L2 techs get sacked, and tech support winds up going to script-readers offshore because customer support is a cost center. For the engineers who keep things running, it gets palmed off to an offshore contractor and their armies of H-1Bs, again bec

Can only improve Rackspace

[grasshoppa]

Seriously, having been stuck with rackspace email for as long as I have been, I can only expect things to get better. They could hardly get worse.

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[Anonymous Coward]

...Challenge....Accepted!

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[NatasRevol]

Spotted the Qwest virgin.

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[bluec]

I've used Rackspace email for about 10 years, since before it was even Rackspace email, and found it to be consistently great. What's the problem? I also used their manager servers some years ago and also found those very, very good. The company has grown a lot since then so I wouldn't be surprised if the quality of their service and support has reduced somewhat, although their prices hadn't last time I had a quote from them.

Not a Surprise

[segedunum]

Rackspace has been living a charmed life for quite some time. The thorny issue of making money rears its head though and people just aren't going for the completely uneconomical prices that Rackspace charges.

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[Jason Levine]

I used to have a site hosted on a Rackspace dedicated server. Monthly hosting costs were over $350 a month. Then we moved to another host with a comparable dedicated server and our costs dropped to about $170 a month. Recently, we realized that we didn't need a dedicated server and switched to a VPS host for $34 a month. Unless your site is extremely powerful or resource-intensive, you probably don't need a $300+ a month dedicated server, despite what Rackspace tells you.

As a post-script to our move off

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[cheater512]

One month for hosting isn't terribly uncommon nor unreasonable.

Your new host will have the same line, unless you are billed per hour (E.g. AWS) and in which case you still need to pay for the full hour even if you terminate the server after 5 minutes.

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[Jason Levine]

Maybe I wasn't clear. We were with Rackspace for years and decided to go with another hosting provider. So, a few weeks before the end of our term, I told them we'd like to cancel at the end of the term. I was told I needed to pay for an additional month due to some obscure contract line.

When I cancelled with my last dedicated hosting provider, I made sure ahead of time to ask what I needed to do. They said I could log into their panel and submit a cancellation request effective either immediately or on

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[cheater512]

That is weird. Sounds like the person you got didn't have a clue.
If you begin the cancellation process 60 days before you want it cancelled, and they have a 30 day policy, then you should be fine and not have to pay for 90 days.

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[vux984]

One months notice cancellation policies are pretty much industry standard.

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[saleenS281]

I wouldn't consider "well before the renewal date" to be less than one month before the renewal date. That is literally standard operating procedure at every hosting company I've ever worked with.

Not a bad merger

[jbolden]

I think this merger makes some sense. Century Link plays larger than most RackSpace customers with their private cloud. Rack Space doesn't have a super close relationship with any of the networking companies. I can see some nice synergy. As a Century Link channel partner, I'm hoping this goes through.

CenturyLink is okay

[tomhath]

I've had them for land line and DSL for years. No complaints about service or support - just my experience with them, YMMV.

Isn't rackspace the owner of SGI?

[damn_registrars]

That would mean that a company notorious for lousy customer service is about to buy a company whose greatest assets are irrelevant.

Yeah, that sounds about right. Carry on.

I see a work environment problem

[Applehu Akbar]

Can Rackspace datacenters handle the steam and diesel smoke from CenturyLink's servers?