

Rackspace acquires Jungledisk - azsromej
http://blog.jungledisk.com/2008/10/22/jungle-disk-announcement/

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callmeed
Now this one is interesting ... mainly because JD is designed to work with
S3–which is clearly a competitor to Rackspace now.

I wonder how RS plans to change JD in the future.

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azsromej
They're interested in allowing you to choose your back-end cloud provider (S3
vs Cloud Files)

<http://www.jungledisk.com/RackspaceFAQ.aspx>

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ryanwaggoner
Rackspace is on a spending spree :-)

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easyfrag
I guess they read Warren Buffet's Times Op-Ed, I hope buying when others are
fearful doesn't just apply to stocks.

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netcan
Shouldn't apply just to stocks (Buffet likes to buy companies). But you think
startups can be bought at bargain prices right now?

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fallentimes
Yes, because the valuations and terms from VCs have already weakened.

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netcan
Could you estimate the degree?

Even solid socks like Google & MS have taken something like a 40% hit. I
assume many smaller public tech companies have taken 50%+ hits.

You think that $X could by you a bigger slice of a startup today then 2 months
ago to the degree public companies have?

It's actually an interesting situation for cashed up companies that could use
startups if they can get them at the right price. The value of a small company
to investors is usually linked to their chances of getting acquired or going
public. These are often linked to their chances of getting additional funding
along the way. All these are now not decreased (although if you're planning on
IPO in 5 yrs, the current state doesn't count for much).

This doesn't apply to acquirors to whom (assumingly) the acquisition has some
sort of real value. That real value doesn't have too much with the state of
investment markets.

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fallentimes
No idea on the degree as I was just talking about the general trend not
specific numbers.

 _"You think that $X could by you a bigger slice of a startup today then 2
months ago"_

Yes, but I have no idea to what degree (see 1st comment). And with publicly
traded companies, just because their stock price is down doesn't mean they
aren't sitting on massive cash reserves (e.g. Microsoft) so I wouldn't be
surprised to see more acquisitions happen in the near future as companies try
to boost sales.

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rapind
I've never been a rackspace fan, since way back in the day. Way expensive and
I never liked the managed hosting space. However, I believe the jungle disk
and slicehost acquisitions are very smart moves. JD was one of the first
(might have been THE first actually) to provide a synch/backup client for S3
when it was introduced. Smart people, good idea, and the technology isn't
going away. If they keep the people they'll be an asset. Slicehost has a great
image in the hacker community and I love their documentation.

Both companies fit nicely in the cloud space, an VPS is definitely the future.
Rackspace is giving an ear to some smart engineers in their camp, which I
think is great and kinda googlish. They've got my attention now, for what
that's worth.

