Rackspace Survey Also Shows One in Five Retail Websites Experienced
Some Downtime During Last Year’s Big Sales Push
SAN ANTONIO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 18, 2012--
Today, Rackspace® Hosting (NYSE: RAX), the open cloud company, released
findings from its recent national survey of more than 100 e-commerce
decision-makers about plans for keeping online business rolling through
the holiday season. The vast majority (81 percent) of the CIOs, CTOs and
IT chiefs surveyed by Rackspace
in September and early October are taking steps to improve the online
shopping experience for this year’s holiday season. For example, they
are increasing computing capacity, redesigning web sites and taking
additional steps to address security concerns.
The stakes are high as the economy struggles to emerge from its slump,
with 46 percent of respondents saying they expect this year’s online
holiday sales in November and December to be better than last year, and
45 percent saying they expect sales to be about the same. Some 29
percent of the respondent e-retailers are hiring more seasonal workers
this year compared to 2011’s holiday season, while 7 percent say they
will hire fewer.
Web site downtime is expensive
According to the survey, one of the biggest challenges looming in
e-retailers’ minds is website downtime, with 77 percent taking steps to
reduce or eliminate website downtime this holiday season. Last year,
downtime posed a problem for 18 percent of respondents, with losses
typically ranging from hundreds of thousands of dollars to tens of
millions. Almost half (45 percent) of the respondents estimate they
would lose between $500,000 and $5 million if their company’s e-retail
site went down for a single day during the season.
More than a quarter (28 percent) of retailers with online sales who
responded to the Rackspace survey are working with their third-party
hosting provider to make sure customers can keep shopping online during
high-traffic periods.
“Many online retailers have found out the hard way in 2011 that their
internal IT systems and resources weren’t ready to handle large spikes
in holiday sales,” said Adrianna Bustamante, who works in commerce
channel development for Rackspace. “With 45 percent of retailers
expecting holiday sales to grow this year, it is important that
retailers take steps to improve the online shopping experience and
reduce or eliminate downtime during the all-important holiday season.”
Many of the e-retailers surveyed will still rely on internal IT
resources to see them through the season: 29 percent say they are hiring
more IT staff. Nearly a third said they would use load testing (37
percent) and build up website redundancy (33 percent). Nearly half (48
percent) said they would increase computing capacity to improve the
online shopping experience for this year’s holiday season.
For more information on the full survey results, click here.
About the Research
Rackspace Hosting commissioned McLaughlin and Associates to conduct a
national survey among 106 e-retail decision-makers. The respondents
include CIO’s, CTO’s and IT decision-makers who manage their business’
e- Retail website. The national online survey was conducted between
September 21st and October 3rd, 2012. The accuracy of the sample of 106
e- Retail decision-makers is within +/- 9.5% at a 95% confidence
interval. The survey results in this summary have been rounded.
About Rackspace
Rackspace® Hosting (NYSE: RAX) is the open cloud company, delivering
open technologies and powering more than 190,000 customers worldwide.
Rackspace provides its renowned Fanatical Support® across a broad
portfolio of IT products, including Public Cloud, Private Cloud, Hybrid
Hosting and Dedicated Hosting. The company offers choice, flexibility
and freedom from vendor lock in. Rackspace has been recognized by
Bloomberg BusinessWeek as a Top 100 Performing Technology Company and is
featured on Fortune’s list of 100 Best Companies to Work For. Rackspace
was positioned in the Leaders Quadrant by Gartner Inc. in the “2011
Magic Quadrant for Managed Hosting.” Rackspace is headquartered in San
Antonio with offices and data centers around the world. For more
information, visit www.rackspace.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
This Press Release contains forward-looking statements within the
meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of
the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 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 relating to
expected or predicted behaviors of consumers and the impact of cloud
computing; any statements of expectation or belief directly relating to
Rackspace business derived from the survey results; and any statements
of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and
assumptions include a substantial margin of error in the survey results,
inconsistencies in respondent's understanding and Rackspace's analysis
of survey questions and results, the possibility that expected benefits
from any shift in consumer behavior may not materialize as expected; the
achievement of expected operational results from any shift in consumer
behavior; and other risks that are described in Rackspace Hosting's
quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the second quarter 2012 filed with the
Securities and Exchange Commission on August 9, 2012. Except as required
by law, Rackspace 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.
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Source: Rackspace Hosting
Rackspace Hosting
Christina Weaver, 210-312-4593
Christina.weaver@rackspace.com