SA employees a factor behind Rackspace`s high growth in 2005

Rackspace Managed Hosting in Europe has attributed a large part of its revenue growth from its technical and support areas to the company`s high level of South African employees.

Commenting on the company`s international financial achievements, Jacques Greyling, director of Rackspace operations in Europe, said 40% of the company`s data centre support personnel and 25% of its support engineers located in Europe are South Africans.

"They are very hard-working, committed and passionate about what they do and we acknowledge that their efforts have made a very tangible contribution to the growth and success of our European operations. We have a total of 116 people on our Rackspace Europe payroll which is truly multiracial, representative of 17 countries and speaking 27 languages, including Zulu and Afrikaans."

South African companies using Rackspace Managed Hosting services with servers located in the UK, have complimented the company for its policy of allocating, wherever possible, support employees of the same nationality, saying that the benefits of dealing with someone who "speaks your home language and understands your environment" are immense.

Rackspace internationally during 2005 achieved 60% growth in annual revenue to US$ 139 million (about R850 million) and a net income of US$11 million (about R67 million), an increase of 129% over 2004.

Across its international operations Rackspace added more than 600 new customers in the fourth quarter of 2005 and more than 2 000 new customers for the year. To support the company`s rapid growth, Rackspace added 250 employees in 2005 and plans to hire up to 400 more during 2006 across all areas of the company including sales, support and data centre operations.