We’ve got some exciting news to share with you today. Jungle Disk has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Rackspace Hosting, Inc., the world leader in managed hosting. This transaction will ensure that Jungle Disk can continue to innovate and grow even in challenging economic times that are resulting in downsizing at other startups. We expect that the additional resources available to us by working through Rackspace, along with their commitment to Fanatical Support®, will help us accelerate development, improve quality, and reach a larger audience than would otherwise be possible.
We know that many of you may have questions about what this means for the future of Jungle Disk, so we’ve put together an FAQ to help address these concerns. Several of the questions are below, and you can see all the questions and answers on our FAQ page. Feel free to add any other questions in the comments and we will do our best to answer them.
- How does this affect new and existing customers? There will be no changes for new and existing customers. The software and service will continue working and be supported just as it is now, by the same team that has developed it from day one.
- Who is Rackspace? Rackspace is the world’s leader in managed hosting. They operate 8 datacenters in the US, Europe, and Asia. Founded in 1998, they have a consistent record of profitability and are a public company traded on the NYSE. In a market that is highly competitive, their commitment to great customer service (they even trademarked it: Fanatical Support®) has established Rackspace as the gold standard in hosting. Rackspace is also a strong believer and early leader in Cloud Computing.
- How will Jungle Disk customers benefit from this acquisition? The primary benefit for our customers will be our ability to expand with additional resources available for both development and support. Rackspace is a company that has built its entire business around the promise of Fanatical Support and we will adopt the same approach with Jungle Disk. The Rackspace acquisition will also help ensure the long-term availability and stability of the Jungle Disk software, something that is very difficult for any startup to do alone in the current economic environment.
See this page for the full Rackspace announcement FAQ.
You can read the official Rackspace press release here. In addition to the Jungle Disk acquisition, Rackspace announced a number of other new cloud computing developments at a live event in Austin today. You can watch a replay of today’s event (including a cameo by yours truly, Jungle Dave) at the Rackspace Cloud Event website.
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Shashi said,
October 22, 2008 @ 2:06 pm
Congratulations, Jungle Team!
Von Freud » Blog Archive » Rackspace buys Slicehost and JungleDisk said,
October 22, 2008 @ 2:19 pm
[...] exciting news today. Rackspace bought both Slicehost and JungleDisk. These are two excellent startups with [...]
Rackspace Acquires Slicehost and JungleDisk: Challenges Amazon’s Could Computing Services | GroupHelp.NET - Easy everything! said,
October 22, 2008 @ 3:05 pm
[...] one of the world’s largest hosting providers, announced two major acquisitions today: SliceHost and JungleDisk. Slicehost is a popular cloud computing and hosting provider with about 15,000 users, while [...]
Rackspace Acquires Slicehost and JungleDisk: Challenges Amazon’s Could Computing Services | Unusual Fellow said,
October 22, 2008 @ 3:06 pm
[...] one of the world’s largest hosting providers, announced two major acquisitions today: SliceHost and JungleDisk. Slicehost is a popular cloud computing and hosting provider with about 15,000 users, while [...]
Christopher Humphries said,
October 22, 2008 @ 3:13 pm
I hope this means more energy can be made on the software instead of running a business? If so, woot!
Rackspace acquires cloud providers Slicehost and Jungle Disk | Virtualization.com said,
October 22, 2008 @ 3:21 pm
[...] Rackspace Hosting, Inc. (NYSE: RAX) today announced it has acquired privately owned VPS provider Slicehost, and storage provider Jungle Disk. [...]
Paul Stamatiou said,
October 22, 2008 @ 3:38 pm
Mad props Dave!
Luke H said,
October 22, 2008 @ 3:39 pm
Huh? Your last blog post says “With all the recent talk of belt-tightening and startup layoffs, we’re fortunate to be going in the opposite direction. The Jungle Disk business is growing fast and we’re looking to expand our team.” — then just days later you announce that you were seeking VC funding and couldn’t survive without an acquisition?? Hmmmm…. I understand that RackSpace must have made a verrry lucrative offer, but spinning this as a positive for your customers is something that reeks of corporate marketing dreg. “Fanatical Support”… errm no thanks, I was happy with the homespun dev team the way it was. IMHO this is a sellout and a mistake. I forsee major price hikes in the future, changes to the EULA, changes (read: discontinuation) to the “lifetime license” and reduced quality of the JD desktop software as “big business” moves in. Sad day for me…
Tony said,
October 22, 2008 @ 4:08 pm
Awesome job guys. Been with Jungledisk for over a year and love it.
Jeff Haynie said,
October 22, 2008 @ 4:26 pm
Great job Dave. You’ve worked hard and deserve this opportunity!
Rackspace Acquires Jungle Disk | Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins said,
October 22, 2008 @ 5:43 pm
[...] Thanks for visiting the Affiliate Tip blog. Subscribe to my RSS feed or enter your e-mail on the top right to get updates by e-mail.Two of my favorite companies are Rackspace (hosting) and Jungle Disk (online backup) are getting together with an announcement that Rackspace is acquiring Jungle Disk. [...]
Craig Baker said,
October 22, 2008 @ 6:26 pm
I was happy supporting the little guy, but rackspace, common on!
Elmer Palmer said,
October 22, 2008 @ 6:35 pm
Mad props to Otto and the team! I told Aunt Silvie that you all would sell out someday and it sure happened!
Jungledisk acquired by Rackspace, a major managed hosting provider — omglog said,
October 22, 2008 @ 6:45 pm
[...] Jungledisk acquired by Rackspace, a major managed hosting provider [...]
Jungle Dave said,
October 22, 2008 @ 7:25 pm
@Luke – the hiring post was made with the knowledge of the upcoming Rackspace deal, even though we couldn’t talk about it at that time. It’s unlikely we would be hiring now given without doing this deal. We weren’t in any danger of shutting down, but with the problems startups are having raising capital it wouldn’t have been smart to cut it close.
formless said,
October 22, 2008 @ 7:29 pm
congrats crt! you are the goldenboy!
Chris Peterson said,
October 22, 2008 @ 7:29 pm
Congratulations! I hope that Amazon S3 support will not be deprecated. I know the FAQ says it will still be supported, but this will still be important to many customers in the future.
Randy said,
October 22, 2008 @ 7:48 pm
Both a business and personal users. With rackspace dying in the open market (they went public earlier this year…I give JD a year before it gets sucked under the prop and becomes shark bait. I hate it too…it’s a great product with a great team.
I hope I’m wrong
Rackspace Cloud Hosting: Sites, Files & Servers | Laughing Squid said,
October 22, 2008 @ 8:06 pm
[...] – Jungle Disk [...]
Jay Weinshenker said,
October 22, 2008 @ 10:50 pm
Just great. Is there anything rackspace has touched and NOT turned into a steaming turd?
Tyler said,
October 22, 2008 @ 10:52 pm
Congrats and best of luck, but it does worry me as well. Your support and feature improvement have been great so far. I hope the terms of the deal allow you to strongly control your product and its direction, because so far you’ve done a great job. I guess we users just have to trust that you had us in mind when you signed the acquisition deal just like you did with all your great features so far!
R U KIDDING ME? said,
October 23, 2008 @ 12:33 am
ROTFLMAO! I am an enterprise architect with global services company and was looking for a consumer option for “friends and family” when I ran across JD’s access to Amazon’s S3. I personally have free storage with very jazzy software that keeps track of file updates at block level, compresses it at an extreme level. All very cool stuff and we manage 3.9M desktops with it around the globe.
However, not a consumer option for friends and family. So JD looks like the closest thing in the consumer market (but without compression prior to upload to Amazon), and now a services company that is struggling bought them.
Sheez, my luck in finding this before pulling the trigger is great! I need to buy a lottery ticket!
RackSpace Acquires Slicehost and JungleDisk – to Compete with Amazon’s Cloud Computing Services | Startup Wire said,
October 23, 2008 @ 8:59 am
[...] has acquired SliceHost – cloud computing and hosting provider with more than 15,000 users and JungleDisk – an online back up service with quiet a loyal user base. The acquisitions will most definitely [...]
RackSpace Acquires Slicehost and JungleDisk – to Compete with Amazon’s Cloud Computing Services | Startup Meme said,
October 23, 2008 @ 9:00 am
[...] has acquired SliceHost – cloud computing and hosting provider with more than 15,000 users and JungleDisk – an online back up service with quiet a loyal user base. The acquisitions will most definitely [...]
Jeremy said,
October 23, 2008 @ 9:35 am
Well JungleDisk, it was fun while it lasted. I too was supportive of the little guy but I guess when JungleRackspaceDisk comes looking for more money to get an “upgrade” to the latest JD version I will have to seek out alternatives.
Alexander Gieg said,
October 23, 2008 @ 11:02 am
Hmm… I don’t mind JD being now sold by a big corporation. In fact, I have nothing against big corporations, they’re big precisely because they offer something that either many people feel is worth enough to pay for, or a few people feel is worth enough to pay a lot for. I surely hope Rackspace stays interested in selling to individuals, but given they’re focused on big customers I don’t see this as likely on the long term. However, there’s always the possibility that they’ll see JD as a good marketing tool, somehow like free anti-virus for individuals helps drive sales of corporate versions, meaning at some point the basic JD client could become free. Who knows?
As for Cloud Files, I’ve looked at its pricing and it doesn’t seem to be better than S3. Unless I understood something wrong, the bandwidth price per GB is way more expensive, with CF going for $0.22 in / $0.22 out while S3 has a much more affordable $0.10 in / $0.17 out. When you consider backup is all about “in”, with “out” being a rare circumstance, that adds up to a HUGE difference. Not to mention storing is twice as expensive: $0.00002/store vs. $0.00001/store. The real advantage CF has over S3 is at file retrieval: free vs. $0.000001/retrieval. All put together, it seems to me CF shines at serving small files (say, JPGs) over and over again to big web sites. For backup purposes, though, S3 is still king.
Jungle Dave said,
October 23, 2008 @ 2:42 pm
@Jay – Not sure what you mean. So far Rackspace’s only other acquisition has been webmail.us (now Mailtrust) which has been a big success for both webmail customers and Rackspace. They are pretty smart about not screwing up a good thing.
@Alexander – We’re working to see what kind of pricing makes sense for Cloud Files with Jungle Disk, don’t assume that the current beta Cloud Files pricing is final.
Alexander Gieg said,
October 24, 2008 @ 9:16 am
That’s nice to know. I have no special attachment to S3. If CF becomes cheaper than S3, all the while providing the same level of service, I’ll surely switch.
Skeptic said,
October 25, 2008 @ 1:47 pm
Whenever a company is acquired, they always issue glowing press releases about how “excited” they are. And in the end, in my experience, the customers almost always get screwed. Usually sooner as opposed to later.
What happened? said,
October 25, 2008 @ 9:58 pm
Man, I thought things were going great then I find this? Rackspace severely over-estimates its value — whatever they do ends up costing the consumer big $$. That’s fine as long as I don’t have to deal with them but now it seems that will be harder to avoid. Since they have gone public with their desire to compete with S3, it’s rather obvious that S3 will not feature strongly in JungleDisk going forward.
I have no problem with big companies in general, but I do have trouble with Rackspace. That “fanatical support” garbage is just market speak, and the last couple of years it has gotten worse. I’m really sorry this happened, I like JD, and I like S3, but there really needs to be an open source alternative to prevent just this sort of game change.
A public promise (from both old and new owners) that existing lifetime license agreements will remain in place would help set aside some of the sting. Somehow “We are not planning any pricing changes at this time” doesn’t leave me too confident about that.
Jungle Dave said,
October 26, 2008 @ 6:59 pm
@Skeptic – I’m not going to claim that never happens, we’re going to do our best to make sure it doesn’t. Customers can also get screwed when startups shut down or don’t have the resources to keep up development and support, something we won’ t have to worry about.
As mentioned in the FAQ, the free upgrade policy will remain in place for desktop and workgroup users. Our early adopters are our best customers and best advertisers – we have no reason to try and squeeze you for more cash – we’re focused on expanding our user base not abusing it!
Csp2JD said,
October 26, 2008 @ 11:12 pm
I know Amazon S3.
I like the size of Amazon S3.
I like its development philosophies and its history.
Echo all of the above for JungleDisk (at least to date).
I don’t know Rackspace.
I don’t know Cloud Files.
I don’t want or need Cloud Files.
If JD leaves Amazon S3, I’m leaving JD.
I’ll watch with interest, and with a sad and initially skeptical squint.
Jungle Disk to be Aquired by Rackspace | IT Management and Cloud Blog said,
October 27, 2008 @ 4:30 pm
[...] Jungle Disk and Rackspace [...]
Dwayne Dietrich said,
October 28, 2008 @ 9:50 am
Congrats! I am a new user of your service and only opted to use you since Carbonite would not support NAS drives. Now with Rackspace behind you, my advice for you is to go after Carbonite. Their service is excellent and UI is great. It won’t be long before Carbonite decides to go after this space of extended drives and workgroups. You could lead frog them if done right = make your UI better and easier than Carbonite + Advertise correctly. Carbonite is starting to advertise everwhere. The bottom line, most users hate to back-up their stuff on more local drives. And most users in the future will have an external drive since most users are now opting for lap tops which have limited storage. There is more to the business case, but you get the idea. Customers prefer the auto-backup to 3rd party to off-site storage but only if it is easy and painless to maintain, restore. If Carbonite did not support NAS drives, I would not have used your service as I find Carbonite easier. Best of luck to you and your team. Good luck.
Caroline said,
October 29, 2008 @ 6:35 am
This is great! Have known about Rackspace since they started – none better anywhere!
I think Dave has made a smart decision for his customers, himself and the long viability of his company, which benefits both. I was looking for the right Back-up solution. So happy that I can deal with the guys I already know & trust.
Rex Moncrief said,
October 31, 2008 @ 8:50 am
As a huge fan and user of JD (both personally and migrating many of my clients to it), I can only hope that Dave and the crew do live up to their promise of support. Also, I hope that you live up to your commitment to move forward with multiple storage providers, including remaining with S3. One good selling point for me with JD to customers is mentioning the “Amazon.com” name. It’s a very recognizable brand and even though they have had a few issues, my clients don’t mind sticking with them.
Best of luck to the JD crew and I’m excited (albeit a little apprehensive) to see how this plays out.
Talkin’ with Rackspace’s CEO Lanham Napier ’bout the Cloud and hosting « Barton’s Blog said,
November 6, 2008 @ 4:06 pm
[...] the company decided on SliceHost and JungleDisk as acquisition [...]
Mitch said,
November 6, 2008 @ 6:38 pm
Any plans to drop Amazon? Please say no. I use Jungle Disk to get data in and out of my EC2 apps.
AAP said,
November 10, 2008 @ 9:14 am
I second Csp2JD’s comments/poem. Leave Amazon and I leave JD.
On the otherhand, I want to see JD develop a Windows Server edition and more enterprise features so this just may be what needed to happen.
Frederick Townes said,
November 30, 2008 @ 4:53 pm
Very excited about this move. Finally getting started with JD myself and this is making me more confident about RS products in general as far as finding all solutions in one place. Looking forward to what’s next.
Brian said,
December 18, 2008 @ 2:59 pm
Awesome news guys. I look forward to using the rackspace cloud.
Ryan Condon said,
December 25, 2008 @ 12:46 pm
I have never used JD (but am considering). I have used Rackspace for enterprise hosting for 2 years and say they set the bar high. They are watching their physical server hosting business evaporate with VMWare and cloud computing and the likes. They are making moves like JD and slicehost to stay in business. I think they will eere the downturn with strength.
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January 3, 2009 @ 3:26 am
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May 24, 2009 @ 8:11 pm
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Philipp Schuch » Blog Archive » Eine neue Backup Strategie said,
June 21, 2009 @ 11:57 am
[...] Es stellt sich natürlich die Frage, ob man Amazon vertrauen kann. Ich glaube nicht, dass Amazon versuchen wird, meine Daten zu entschlüsseln und zu analysieren. Ich sehe kein Geschäftsmodell, das einen solchen Vertrauensbruch rechtfertigen würde. Im Gegensatz zu einer selbstgestrickten Lösung mit einem externen ftp Server o.ä. bietet mir Amazon zudem eine größere Sicherheit, dass die Daten professionell gespeichert und gesichert werden, als wenn ich mich selbst auch noch um die Technik kümmern oder auf einen kleineren Dienstleister verlassen müsste. Jungle Disk macht als Software Anbieter ebenfalls einen guten Eindruck und wurde jünst von Rackspace, einem der größten und seriösesten Hosting-Anbieter der Welt übernommen. [...]
Magento Rules the Ecommerce World; Jungledisk (owned by Rackspace) vs. Mozy (owned by EMC) | RJ Martino's Web Log said,
June 24, 2009 @ 5:59 pm
[...] to a vendor unless I know their future intentions. I hope things aren’t going to change (JungleDisk claims nothing will change), but you never know. Also, JungleDisk has a very strong competitor in Mozy Unlimited Backup [...]
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June 28, 2009 @ 6:30 pm
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July 5, 2009 @ 11:02 pm
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WebHosts 2009» Blog Archive » 12 Companies Targeting Early Tech Adopters said,
July 12, 2009 @ 6:04 pm
[...] in the cloud computing arena. In October Rackspace announced two major acquisitions: SliceHost and JungleDisk. Slicehost is a popular cloud computing and hosting provider with about 15,000 users, while [...]
12 Companies Targeting Early Tech Adopters | Social Nibble said,
July 26, 2009 @ 6:08 pm
[...] in the cloud computing arena. In October Rackspace announced two major acquisitions: SliceHost and JungleDisk. Slicehost is a popular cloud computing and hosting provider with about 15,000 users, while [...]
Richard said,
September 3, 2009 @ 1:38 pm
So when customers purchase JungleDisk/Rackspace services – where (geographically) are the servers likely to be?
I am looking at reselling solutions to clients in England, and purchasing Amazon S3 is presumably the only way I can ensure my customers are as close as possible to their data.
A word or two on this would be good.
Jungle Dave said,
September 3, 2009 @ 5:14 pm
Amazon has storage options available in both the US and Europe right now. Currently Rackspace storage is only located in US datacenters.
Cloud Computing said,
October 15, 2009 @ 3:02 am
Congratualtions Jungle Team. I hope this merger will benefit the new and existing customers by allowing them to expand with resources available for both development and support.
Happy Blogging!