The Rackspace Startup Program provides cloud resources to startups participating in programs with 500 Startups, TechStars, Y Combinator and General Assembly.    “A lot of folks don’t understand that Rackspace is actually a startup success story – they grew from a 10 person start-up to a leading cloud player, so they understand what it takes to succeed. Fortunately for the tech community, Rackspace continues to invest in entrepreneurs by providing compute power,” said Dave McClure, Founder of 500 Startups.  “Unlike years ago, these startups will likely never touch a server because the cloud provides a cheaper, easier way to operate – which is key for any startup that is boot-strapped and short on time.  We’re using Rackspace at 500 Startups, and we’ve been consistently pleased with both the service and the support.”

“Now through the free app, users can manage their Rackspace Cloud and customize OpenStack clouds – anywhere they have a connection!” a spokesperson for Rackspace tells WebProNews. “The universal app supports Rackspace Cloud Servers and Rackspace Cloud Files for multiple cloud accounts and in the US and UK.”

“As people debate if the tablet has a place in the enterprise, Rackspace believes adding this level of functionality mobile devices such as iPads and iPhones allow system administrators some freedom that is available to other workers who have the option to go mobile,” she adds.  ”Other new features include Chef integration helping to automate processes while saving system admins time, and it is one of the first to run on Apple’s iOS 4.3, connecting audio and video Cloud Files from the app directly to Apple TV.”

“Now that the cloud application is available on more portable devices and has more features, Rackspace is extending fanatical support by bringing ease of use and portability to the cloud,” said Mike Mayo, mobile application developer of the Rackspace Cloud.

SXSW is just getting started out here in Austin. Look for more SXSW coverage, including exclusive interviews from WebProNews throughout the interactive portion of the vent.

Rackspace will be participating in various panels and events at SXSW from Saturday through Monday.

The company’s new pay-as-you-go cloud offerings based in the UK include Rackspace Cloud Files, running on OpenStack Object Storage, and Cloud Servers, based on the Xen hypervisor. The new cloud platform joins the dedicated hosting platform already offered in EMEA.

It’s worth noting that this week, Rackspace also announced that the open source OpenStack project founded by Rackspace and NASA now has 40 cloud partners. 

"Our US-based Rackspace cloud has already been hugely successful, with over 100,000 customers globally now taking advantage of our hosted cloud services," said President and CEO Lanham Napier. "Due to storage regulations set out under European law, many UK companies are restricted from using cloud. Our UK offering allows companies to avoid offshore data issues and weighty upfront capital investments which helps them become more strategically agile from a business perspective. We’re delighted to launch our UK cloud today and we already have over 500 customers in beta."

"Some industry analysts have stated that by 2012, 20% of organisations will no longer own an in- house IT infrastructure," Napier pointed out. "Cloud computing enables this evolution in a cost- effective way; if customers on the cloud no longer need resources, they stop using them and almost immediately stop paying for them. This will be critical to companies still fighting to cut costs from their budgets, and will allow them tocontrol spending more tightly than ever before."

"It is as a result of direct feedback from our existing and prospective customer base in Europe that we have brought the Rackspace cloud to Europe and built it out in our UK data centre," he added. "The Rackspace European cloud brings with it reduced latency for those customers and helps eradicate concerns over currency fluctuations and European data legislation compliance."

Rackspace is also delivering on its acquisition of Cloudkick (announced last month), and has fully integrated the Cloudkick panel into the UK cloud offering so users can manage both US and UK cloud servers from one panel, the representative says.

Initially, Rackspace donated the code that powers its own Cloud Files and Cloud Servers products to the project, while NASA contributed its Nebula Cloud Platform. 

"From day-one Rackspace has believed industry standards emerge from widely adopted, open platforms," said Lew Moorman, president, cloud and chief strategy officer at Rackspace Hosting. "Over the past six months we have seen the OpenStack community grow, showing we are not alone in this fight. As one of the founding members we couldn’t be more excited about OpenStack’s success. We plan to continue to deploy OpenStack at Rackspace as the center of our cloud hosting options."

OpenStack, a collection of open source technologies, is currently developing two interrelated projects: OpenStack Compute and OpenStack Object Storage. As Rackspace explains:

OpenStack Compute is software to provision and manage large groups of virtual private servers, and OpenStack Object Storage is software for creating redundant, scalable object storage using clusters of commodity servers to store terabytes or even petabytes of data. The first ‘Austin’ code release was October 2010, and second ‘Bexar’ release is expected to be available for download February 3, 2011.

Among those participating in OpenStack, besides founding members Rackspace and NASA, are: Citrix, Dell, AMD, Cloud.com, Intel, and many others. You can see the full roster here.

"OpenStack has seen an incredibly fast amount of interest in the cloud community, drawing in many of the key and more interesting players, even people who ostensibly would compete with OpenStack,"  said Michael Cote, analyst at developer-focused industry analyst firm RedMonk.  "This new community has been doing a good job of building the stack, and more importantly, the ecosystem needed for an open source cloud computing platform."

Rackspace says it will continue to implement OpenStack throughout its own portfolio, as the project matures.

Rackspace considers the move a way to better position itself in Silicon Valley, as Cloudkick was originally funded by Y Combinator, and its headquarters is in San Francisco, "making Cloudkick’s headquarters the latest outpost for delivering Fanatical Support and innovation in cloud computing," a representative for Rackspace tells WebProNews.

"Cloudkick serves more than 1,500 businesses from Fortune 500 enterprises to nimble startups — and has seen more than 1 million servers pass through its tools," she says. "Through this acquisition, Rackspace will deliver even better support through superior management tools that will be available directly to customers and also to the Rackers who serve them."

"Until now, the cloud has been about automating hardware and making it more agile and efficient," explains Rackspace Chief Strategy Officer Lew Moorman. "But as cloud computing has made it easier to launch servers, companies launch a lot more of them, and use many of them inefficiently — and even lose track of some.  Cloudkick brings order to that chaos and sprawl. It takes cloud computing to a new level: into automation of the work of system administrators. In addition to providing robust cloud health information, Cloudkick enables automation around deployment and scaling.  It makes cloud computing more powerful, with less expense."

Cloudkick, which launched two years ago has been working with Mozilla, Vimeo, ProPublica and National Instruments, and is a member of the OpenStack community, the open source cloud project founded by Rackspace itself. 

Financial terms of the acquisition have not been revealed.

Pat Matthews, SVP of RackSpace‘s cloud computing business, which includes business email, shared some thoughts with us about the impact Facebook’s new offering will have on the email industry. RackSpace itself powers business email for over 2 million users.

"I don’t think Facebook will encroach on business mail, at least not anytime soon, mostly because of the security and privacy implications," Matthews tells WebProNews. "Facebook is very consumer oriented and I don’t see this crossing into business anytime soon. Mark Zuckerberg has specifically stated the company is all about consumers. His focus is leading them to greatness."

"I do think consumer mail is at risk," he adds. "Consumers live in Facebook, not on Google. I think that Gmail and AOL should be worried."

Still, Google has Google Apps going for it, which it has now expanded to encompass most of the company’s offerings. That could play a significant role in keeping businesses using Google, though Gmail has always been a part of Google Apps. I have to wonder if Google’s news wasn’t somehow spurred by Facebook’s. 

"Facebook users will use Facebook mail as an extension of their already popular messaging services," says Matthews. "I have no doubt this will be extremely popular."

"Facebook is one of the most innovative companies on the planet," he adds. "I think that they will influence all types of applications, business and consumer."

It’s no secret that businesses are already placing a great deal of emphasis on reaching Facebook users, and it will be very interesting to see the impact the new messaging system has on their strategies. I’ve already speculated that we’ll start seeing more businesses utilizing personal profiles to try and get into Facebook users’ primary inboxes (as the system filters messages that aren’t from "friends" into a secondary inbox). 

Social media and email have been getting closer and closer with one another for some time already. "In the past, organizations supported collaboration through e-mail and highly structured applications only," said Monica Basso, research vice president at Gartner, who predicts 20% of employees will use social networks as a main business communication tool by 2014. 

"Today, social paradigms are converging with e-mail, instant messaging (IM) and presence, creating new collaboration styles," she said. "However, a truly collaborative, effective and efficient workplace will not arise until organizations make these capabilities widely available and users become more comfortable with them. Technology is only an enabler; culture is a must for success.”"

When asked what Facebook’s new system means for the larger trend of social networking and email converging, Matthews told WebProNews, "Consumers want one view for many things but they also want very different views for their personal and business lives. This is why I really think Gmail should be worried."

It is worth noting that our conversation with Matthews took place before Google’s announcement, so I’ll have to find out if this changes his opinion on that. Update: He says, "They are proving they’re worried by doing this. All of these apps already existed so I doubt this move will make that big of an impact. The main thing Google needs to worry about is the fact that people are living their personal lives inside Facebook.  They’re going to want their personal email and apps where they already live."

What do you think? Should Gmail be worried?

Go here for Mark Zuckerberg’s philsophy behind the new messaging system. 

It’s interesting because it aims to match apps to businesses based on their profile information. RackSpace tells WebProNews it will will "revolutionize business apps".

Rackspace says it aims to do for business applications what online matchmaking sites do for singles – "transforming the process of finding that perfect application match through automation and sophisticated targeting."

"Going through app stores online has been frustrating and time consuming to sort through app after app that isn’t even relevant just to find the one that is," a spokesperson tells us. "AppMatcher is about to change all that by taking the winning formula for another industry to the business app world."

Users answer four questions about their company size, industry, department and title, then AppMatcher identifies apps it thinks best meet the user’s specs, often including several that the user may not have known existed. There is a feature called AppMatcher Locker, which lets users organize and review all of their apps, and introduce apps to others in different departments within their organization. 

Users can connect their lockers with co-workers turning the feature into "an online collaboration environment where the reviews and opinions of all application subscribers at the users’ firm are centrally located," the company explains. As new apps match a user’s profile, they will appear in their locker as a suggested app. 

If you’re wondering what kind of social media integration AppMatcher has, Andy Schroepfer, VP of Enterprise Strategy for Rackspace tells us, "The site will immediately have links and ties into feeds out to twitter and Facebook. These will only get more deep and more prevalent over time."

"For example, when you find a matching app on AppMatcher, it can be posted to your twitter or Facebook feed similar to the way Farmville activities are published," he adds. 

That could certainly be useful for exposing useful apps to employees and co-workers. We’re wondering if social media profile information will one day be integrated into the matching process itself. We didn’t really get an answer one way or the other about that, but it didn’t appear to be ruled out. 

With the rate of new available business apps increasing rapidly, Rackspace may be onto something here.

Engagdet has a look at a "mystery HTC Windows Phone 7 device". "A candybar slate from HTC with a 3.7-inch SLCD and 1GHz Snapdragon processor — sounds about right for the Desire, but this little puppy is actually running Windows Phone 7 (presumably a developer build, given the apps catalog)," the publication reports. "According to our tipster, the three buttons under the screen are touch-sensitive à la Nexus One, the camera boasts 8 megapixels of memory retention, and the "hardware is ready." It apparently lacks HTC Sense.

According to Bloomberg, AOL is looking for an executive to lead its music business, with the help of recruiting firm Spencer Stuart.

Apple announced that the iPhone 4 will be made available in 17 more countries starting Friday. This news comes while LG has suggested iPad international expansion could be temporarily hampered.

Rackspace and NASA have teamed up on an open source cloud project called OpenStack.

Rackspace is donating the code that powers its Cloud Files and Cloud Servers products, and NASA is contributing its Nebula Cloud Platform. From there, the two will actively collaborate on joint technology development.

"Modern scientific computation requires ever increasing storage and processing power delivered on-demand" said Chris Kemp, NASA’s Chief Technology Officer for IT. "To serve this demand, we built Nebula, an infrastructure cloud platform designed to meet the needs of our scientific and engineering community. NASA and Rackspace are uniquely positioned to drive this initiative based on our experience in building large scale cloud platforms and our desire to embrace open source"

"We are founding the OpenStack initiative to help drive industry standards, prevent vendor lock-in and generally increase the velocity of innovation in cloud technologies" said Lew Moorman, president, Cloud and CSO at Rackspace. "We are proud to have NASA’s support in this effort. Its Nebula Cloud Platform is a tremendous boost to the OpenStack community. We expect ongoing collaboration with NASA and the rest of the community to drive more-rapid cloud adoption and innovation, in the private and public spheres"

Rackspace says that using the components of the OpenStack initiative, organizations will be able to turn physical hardware into scalable and extensible cloud environments using the same code that is currently in production, serving tens of thousands of customers and large government projects.

In a post on his Scobleizer blog, Robert says, "Building43 a Web site. It’s a T-shirt. It’s a Twitter account. It is a video channel on Blip.tv. It’s a friendfeed group. It’s a sticker. It’s a team. It’s a Facebook Page. It’s a database (or really a few of them). And more."

Everybody will get to find out what it really is at 5pm PT today, when the site is scheduled to go live at Building43.com. Technically, you might be able to get a better feel for it starting an hour before that if you go to this Kyte.tv channel, where Scoble and company will be streaming live from Palo Alto.

What you find upon launch will not begin to cover what you can expect from Building43 by the sound of it. "It is just the start," explains Scoble. "To the trained eye it looks like a WordPress blog and a friendfeed group (and soon a Facebook page and a Twitter account). But we just needed to ship. And ship fast without a dedicated technology team."

"…the promise of Building43 is bigger than just being a WordPress blog with a friendfeed group or a Facebook page. The promise is we can help other people and businesses get excited about the Web we love," he adds.

Early on in Building43′s existence, users can expect to see interviews with Four Seasons, Zappos, Facebook, and Google. They’ve got a number of interviews in the pipes already, and surely there will be many, many more in the future. Scoble says that you can expect at least a couple a week at first, but eventually they will try to do one a day.

People can submit videos, blogs, and more to Building43. They can tag other people’s videos with "building43" on YouTube, include the #building43 hashtag in Tweets etc. Scoble gives more details in his announcement, and certainly more will emerge as the community goes live.

Anything like this that Scoble is involved with is sure to draw plenty of followers and interest from the technology industry. It’s going to be interesting to see just how big Building43 becomes.

Cloud computing has gotten a lot of buzz lately, especially as behemoth companies like Google and Microsoft wade out into the possibilities. The budding industry certainly seems the next logical step for forward-thinking hosting companies.

“Cloud computing offers tremendous benefits to our customers that complement our traditional managed hosting services,” said Lanham Napier, CEO, Rackspace Hosting.

“Being a leader in hosting means being a leader in the cloud. Today, we made clear our intent to have the best suite of cloud offerings. Our new offerings are part of a strategy to bring cloud benefits to all businesses with simple, cost-effective products that everyone can use, backed by the best customer support that only Rackspace can deliver.”

Slicehost specializes in Xen-based virtual machine hosting, while Jungle Disk’s expertise is in cloud storage. Rackspace says both companies’ capabilities will be integrated into the company’s overall strategy of offering a more robust hosting portfolio.

“On-demand computing is the new foundation of hosting,” said Jason Seats, founder, Slicehost. “Rackspace gives us the ability to expand the Slicehost offer and meet the needs of the corporate world whose interest in cloud technologies has only just begun.

Rackspace shelled out $11.5 million in cash and stock for both companies with performance-incentives equaling up to $16.5 million.