Design Firm Cybernautic Switches to Cloud Sites for Handling of
Hundreds of Thousands of Site Visitors During Production and Broadcast
of Emmy-Winning Show
SAN ANTONIO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 29, 2009--
The Rackspace® Cloud, the cloud
computing division of Rackspace Hosting (NYSE:RAX), today announced
it enabled Cybernautic,
a web design firm, to deliver a significant feat: host the website for
ABC’s Emmy award-winning reality show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
without a single failure, serving millions of visitors continuously
throughout the life of the project.
Cybernautic taps The Rackspace Cloud to keep its estimated 200 client
websites up and running, including the recently constructed site for
Brady Homes, the builder featured in this last Sunday’s Extreme
Makeover: Home Edition episode. The site handled more than 300,000 hits
since going live including a spike of 41,000 users at once during peak
times, such as during taping and construction, and immediately following
the house “reveal.”
Cybernautic made the switch to The Rackspace Cloud when it was asked to
design, build and host the ExtremeBradyHomes.com
website as part of the popular show. The Extreme Makeover producers
warned Cybernautic that the website would go down either during the
taping and construction, or within 48 hours of the show’s initial
airing. It was inevitable, according to the producers, based on
historical experience with websites crashing for previous episodes.
Cybernautic said they did not want to take any chances by using their
dedicated servers, and turned to Rackspace Cloud Sites because of its
reputation for scalability.
“In over 150 shows, it has been rare to find an Internet hosting company
that was equipped to handle the traffic of thousands of people coming to
a builder’s website,” said Conrad Ricketts, executive producer at
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. “No doubt this is a testament to The
Rackspace Cloud for handling what, in most cases, has been an impossible
task. And, without failure, The Rackspace Cloud was able to keep the
pipeline open to hundreds of subcontractors and trade workers, and
thousands of volunteers who wanted to step up to help a family.”
Chad Parker, president and CEO of Cybernautic, said, “I have been
impressed with the speed of the sites we run on Cloud Sites and amazed
at the scalability. We haven’t had a single performance issue, even with
all the heavy traffic the site received,” said Parker. “We have also
been impressed with Cloud Servers, which we are using for other client
projects that require greater control.”
Cloud Sites enables seamless scaling during unpredictable usage spikes,
such as those Cybernautic realized during the Extreme Makeover
construction period, and following the airing of the episode. Parker
said price was also a key consideration, as his design firm has been
growing steadily, and the cost of adding more servers to account for
scaling had been increasing significantly.
The ExtremeBradyHomes.com website—plus the associated Facebook and
Twitter accounts accounting for some 13,000 fans—served as hub of all
online activity associated with the episode. Extreme Makeover released a
minimum of two news releases per day through the site, and reporters
covering the project depended on the site for these news updates. Over
5,000 volunteer applications were submitted via the site for roughly
2,500 available positions.
“We are proud to assist ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition in changing
the lives of the Montgomery family, and bringing the community together
for such a great cause. The fact that we are one of the only web hosting
services that has been able to seamlessly handle the website traffic
generated by this popular primetime show speaks volumes about the value
of our cloud services, especially the scalability, ease of use, and
affordability,” said Emil Sayegh, general manager, The Rackspace Cloud.
“We’re in the business of making IT easy and helping our customers focus
on what they’re good at – in this case, helping families through
charitable activities.”
About The Rackspace Cloud
The Rackspace Cloud provides on-demand scalable website, application and
storage hosting backed by Fanatical Support®. Through its suite of cloud
solutions, Cloud Sites™, Cloud Files™ and Cloud Servers™, The Rackspace
Cloud enables astute developers and IT managers to minimize the hassles,
upfront investments and high costs associated with dedicated hardware
while offering the ability to easily scale hosting resources. For more
information about The Rackspace Cloud, visit www.rackspacecloud.com
or call 1-877-934-0409.
About Rackspace Hosting
Rackspace Hosting is the world’s leader in hosting and cloud computing
and is ranked #43 on FORTUNE Magazine’s 100 Best Companies to work for
in the United States for 2009. Rackspace provides its customers with
Fanatical Support ® in delivering their portfolio of hosted IT services,
including Managed Hosting, Cloud Computing and Email and Apps. For more
information, visit www.rackspace.com.
About Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
The Emmy award winning reality program “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,”
now in its 7th season, is produced by Endemol USA, a division of Endemol
Holding. It’s executive-produced by Anthony Dominici. David Goldberg is
Chairman, Endemol North America. The show airs Sundays from 8:00-9:00
p.m., ET on ABC.
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
concerning expected development, performance or operational results
related to any particular customer or customers of our customers
associated with our hosting solutions; any other statements of
expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any
of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include issues
relating to the performance of a customer’s configuration caused by
forces outside of the control of Rackspace; changes in the economy,
technological and competitive factors, regulatory factors, and (vi), and
other risks that are described in Rackspace Hosting’s Form 10-Q for the
quarter ended June 30, 2009, filed with the SEC on August 13, 2009.
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.
Source: The Rackspace Cloud
The Rackspace Cloud
Krisana Puccio, Marketing Manager, 210-312-5238
krisana.puccio@rackspace.com
