Rackspace offers free clouds to startup-incubators

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 13 October 2011 10:16

IT hosting and cloud computing provider, New York Stock Exchange listed Rackspace Hosting, has brought to Australia and New Zealand its zero cost Rackspace Startup Program that provides free cloud hosting and support services to local incubators that want to encourage their startup companies to use the cloud computing model of IT service delivery, and has named Sydney-based Pollenizer as its first customer.

According to Jim Fagan, VP and managing director of Rackspace Asia Pacific, "Startups have a multiplicity of commercially sensitive factors to juggle that they need to manage - from strategic planning and business development, to backend programming and IT systems development. Rackspace wants to make life easier for these new ventures. As such, we're offering our cloud services and support to specially-selected incubators and their startup companies for free in an effort to build relationships and grow with them all as they continue to develop and expand."

Mark Randall, country manager for Rackspace Australia & New Zealand: "An individual can now start a company without the pain of high capital expenditure costs upfront whether they are located in Perth or Sydney. Business dollars can instead be directed towards important business tasks and research and development projects."

Pollenizer is a Sydney-based web business investor and builder. It claims to "undertake a qualitative and quantitative analysis of each potential new startup and then make a decision as to whether they are suitable for induction into the program."

It boasts a team of 80 "web-loving entrepreneurs" covering "all aspects of a web business [that] tightly integrates customer and product development to build fast and focused results."

Startups that it has nurtured include mogeneration, Posse, 99dresses and Spreets.