Rackspace Cloud Lounge Party at SXSW Interactive 2009

On Monday afternoon at SXSW Interactive 2009, our friends at Rackspace had their big Rackspace Cloud Lounge Party at Brush Square Park out in front of the convention center. Laughing Squid Web Hosting has used Rackspace for our servers and data center for ten years (we’re one of their oldest customers) and I’ve been trying to talk them to do something at SXSW for years, so it’s great to see them in full force this year.

The event was to organized promote their Cloud Hosting services (something we have recently started using with them), including the launch of their new Cloud Servers and Cloud Files coming out of beta. In addition to all of the Rackspace people we’ve been working with, it was great to meet the founders of some of the companies that have joined Rackspace, including Mailtrust, Slicehost and Jungle Disk.

At one point in the party I had the pleasure of introducing Amazon.com CTO Werner Vogels to Rackspace chairman Graham Weston. It was quite an ironic meeting considering that Rackspace is now competing directly with Amazon, of course as Werner was saying at the party, there’s plenty of the cloud pie to go around.

Speaking of Rackspace, they recently announced that they have hired Robert Scoble and Rocky Barbanica to produce video and develop a community for their new project Building 43, “a place for people fanatical about the internet”. Here’s more on the launch from Robert and TechCrunch.

Photo Gallery: Rackspace Cloud Lounge Party

Here’s a video of the Rackspce Cloud Lounge Party at SXSW 2009.

See Previously:

– Robert Scoble Tours the Future Headquarters of Rackspace

– Rackspace Cloud Hosting: Sites, Files & Servers

photos by Scott Beale