Rackspace Startup Programme empowers new British businesses to succeed

Rackspace has given almost quarter of a million pounds worth of cloud hosting services and support for free to 300 members of the Rackspace Startups Programme since it started in the UK six months ago. This is in addition to many other benefits members have received, such as mentoring, expert technical advice and access to networking events. All of these benefits are helping power new UK businesses to succeed, and are provided by Rackspace through over 50 partners, including premier incubators, accelerators, associations and investors.

Jeff Cotten, MD Rackspace International, said: “It’s been incredibly satisfying to watch the UK Startup Programme ramp up as more and more entrepreneurs take advantage of the cloud computing resources and other benefits on offer. We were a startup once, and know how important support like this is to new companies seeking to innovate and disrupt markets as rapidly and inexpensively as possible. It doesn’t stop here, either – we plan to expand this programme to other regions next year.”

Cloud-powered startups
Rackspace makes available cloud services and support for free to each programme member every month. These cloud services are already accelerating the growth and development of these dynamic new ventures by adding scalability, flexibility, control and automation to their IT infrastructure.

Matt Bandy, co-founder of social and business network, GetLunched, said: “The Rackspace Startup Programme has been essential to our growth so far. We use Rackspace’s Cloud to host GetLunched.com, which allows us to keep IT costs to a minimum and gives our infrastructure the scalability and performance we need to manage demand. We’ve also benefited from Rackspace’s proactive service and start-up support, the likes of which is crucial to the successful development of new UK startups, and will no doubt be vital to our continued growth.”

Chris Bradley, founder of online content collection and sharing tool, Publicate, said: “Publicate runs phenomenally well on Rackspace’s Public Cloud, which gives us cost-effective scalability as our growth accelerates. This infrastructure, plus the outstanding support we receive from the company’s Rackers as part of their Startup Programme, has been essential to our success to date.”

Education for future UK plc
Some elements of the Rackspace Startup Programme, such as networking events, are open to any UK startup, and are part of the company’s wider education programme, which includes the Rackspace Academy, launched in June. The Rackspace Academy helps businesses of all sizes learn how to get the best out of cloud computing – especially the hybrid cloud. It consists of events such as Unlocked: the hybrid cloud – the next of which is taking place in London on 19 November – workshops and webinars, plus a range of educational materials, from classroom-based training to online learning – all offered for free to any business, Rackspace customer or not. The next classroom-based training session, Cloud: Hands-on Training, will be held in Manchester on 25 November.

Partnering with major players
The high profile partners involved in the Rackspace Startup Programme include Techstars, Dreamstake, Wayra, Seedcamp, Oxygen Accelerator and Accelerator Academy. Partners located outside of London – ensuring programme access for startups throughout the UK – include ignite100 in Newcastle, dotForge in Sheffield and four organisations in Ireland: Wayra, NDRC, Propeller Venture Accelerator and Ustart.