New collaborative apps help businesses organize, backup and share information in the cloud.

Rackspace Hosting, a web hosting company, today announced a set of new product offerings that help businesses move their IT applications into the cloud. The company states that the new offerings from it include Rackspace Cloud Drive, Rackspace Server Backup, and the upcoming release of Hosted Microsoft SharePoint (expected to be released in December 2009). It claims that these new products help customers to spend less time maintaining basic IT systems, such as file servers and data backup software, and instead focus on their core competencies that drive revenue and add business value. By putting these apps in the cloud, Rackspace is able to provide businesses with its award winning Fanatical Support and a compelling value proposition, adds the company.

"Most every business needs to send emails, share files, and backup data.  But these systems are costly and complex to manage in-house," said Pat Matthews, General Manager, Rackspace Email & Apps. "The cloud presents a great opportunity for businesses to save money and work smarter.  We believe that we are helping our customers gain competitive advantage by putting these apps in the cloud."

"This announcement is an important one for our business, as it highlights both the success of our existing email solutions and our expansion into additional business applications that can bring substantial cost savings to our customers and reduce complexity in their IT environments," said Lew Moorman, President of cloud division, Rackspace Hosting. "More and more businesses are moving their critical applications to the cloud, and we can help them to achieve that goal."