Misplaced Pages

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43-617: The Highland Mall opened on August 4, 1971, developed by Austin Malls Inc., a subsidiary of the Rouse Company . Prior to the construction of the mall, the land was originally home to the St. John's Industrial Institute and Home for Negro Orphans, which burned down in the 1940s. The mall, which was Austin's first enclosed mall, was originally anchored by JCPenney , Austin-based Scarbrough's , and San Antonio-based Joske's . In 1987, Joske's

86-440: A ransomware incident, a theory that was lent further credence by Rackspace's decision to recommend that customers migrate to Microsoft 365 rather than wait to have their Exchange-based solutions restored. On Monday December 5, 2022, the first full day of trading after the incident (which started on the previous Friday), Rackspace's shares were down as much as 16% ($ 0.75). A class action lawsuit against Rackspace Technology, Inc.

129-487: A 600-station learning lab for individualized instruction through technology. Preparation is underway for additional redevelopment at Highland Mall. Plans call for a digital and creative media cluster, expanded information technology programs, culinary and hospitality center, professional incubator space, an advanced manufacturing center, workforce innovation center, and regional health sciences center with simulator lab. In 2017, Rackspace announced plans to open an office in

172-515: A 7.5% interest in the Rouse Company. He was the creator of "The Shrink", a method where an investor buys an interest in a company, then orders stock buy-backs to make the interest more valuable. Schuer died the day after the purchase, and Trizec Properties then acquired the shares and bought a 25% stake. In 1986, the company attempted to purchase a majority share. In 1985, The Rouse Company absorbed all of Connecticut General's interests in

215-503: A private e-mail hosting firm located in Blacksburg, VA. Originally branded as Mailtrust on May 20, 2009, it became part of the newly formed Cloud Office division of Rackspace. On October 22, 2008, Rackspace acquired Slicehost, a provider of virtual servers and Jungle Disk, a provider of online backup software and services . Rackspace announced on March 8, 2017, plans for an expansion to its portfolio to include managed service for

258-518: A reputation for large crowds of visitors to the mall during the Texas Relays (a major track and field event held at the University of Texas at Austin ), generating controversy and allegations of racial discrimination, or at the least, a less-than-welcoming attitude, on the part of mall management towards the visitors, mainly younger African Americans, many who visit from out-of-state. During

301-486: A residential and retail complex. The facility is located next to Roosevelt High School , and many Roosevelt students intern at Rackspace. Fortune ' s "Top 100 Best Companies to Work For 2008" placed Rackspace as No. 32 the first year that Rackspace applied for consideration. The company was praised for its transparency . Regular "Open Book" meetings are held where the top level leaders share in-depth financial information with all employees. In 2011 and 2013,

344-680: Is "absolutely no reason for web hosts to have an editorial policy, and this only gives Jones more attention and makes him look more persecuted." In August 2016, it was confirmed that the American private equity firm , Apollo Global Management , had reached an agreement to buy the company for $ 4.3 billion. The sale was completed in November 2016 and Rackspace officially ended trading on the New York Stock Exchange on November 3, 2016. In May 2017, CEO Taylor Rhodes announced he

387-609: The Austin Chronicle reported that Austin's professional soccer team, the Austin Aztex , were interested in using part of the site for a soccer stadium. The site would have also included "pedestrian-friendly street frontage in a mixed-use design, rapid bus transit and rail right across the street, and structured parking." Grassroots Austin Stadium Supporters (GRASS) was a group that has formed to push for

430-601: The Google Cloud Platform . The program began beta testing on July 18, 2017, with a planned full offering in late 2017. Rackspace partnered with Google in Customer Reliability Engineering, a group of Google Site Reliability Engineers, to ensure cloud applications "run with the same speed and reliability as some of Google's most widely-used products". In 2010, Rackspace contributed the source code of its Cloud Files product to

473-727: The Singapore -headquartered cloud-based data, analytics and AI company, Just Analytics. Rackspace launched ServerBeach in San Antonio in January 2003 as a lower-cost alternative for dedicated servers designed for technology hobbyists who want flexibility and reliability. Richard Yoo was a catalyst in the startup of ServerBeach. A bandwidth and colocation provider, Peer 1 Hosting now known as Cogeco Peer 1 , purchased ServerBeach in October 2004 for $ 7.5 Million. Peer 1 Hosting entered

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516-572: The 2009 Texas Relays, management decided to close the mall several hours earlier than normal, presumably in an attempt to control the crowds and promote safety, prompting protests from the local chapter of the NAACP and a possible boycott of the mall (all part of a larger controversy over perceived negative attitudes in Austin towards the Texas Relays and its largely younger Black fan base, which uses

559-579: The Board of Directors. In 2008, Rackspace moved its headquarters from a building once occupied by Datapoint Corporation to the then-unoccupied Windsor Park Mall in Windcrest, Texas . Rackspace's Chairman, Graham Weston, owned the Montgomery Ward building in the mall until 2006 when it was sold to a developer. The city of Windcrest purchased 111 acres (0.45 km ) south of the mall to create

602-713: The Cross Keys development, then to the project in Columbia, Maryland in December 1969. Its community projects include the Village of Cross Keys in Baltimore and the planned communities of Columbia, Maryland (where it was headquartered), Bridgeland Community, Texas , and Summerlin, Nevada . To develop these projects, in 1962 Rouse brought on Bill Finley, who built a planned "company town", Ravenswood, West Virginia ,

645-477: The Howard Research and Development subsidiary. In 1986, former general manager of Columbia and executive vice president of development Micheal Spear became president as a successor to Rouse. In 1990, Spear died in a crash with his wife and one daughter in his Piper PA-31T Cheyenne attempting a single engine missed approach near Logan International Airport . In 1997, Anthony Deering took over as CEO of

688-749: The Netherlands, Germany, Singapore, Mexico and Hong Kong. Its data centers are located in Amsterdam (Netherlands), Virginia (USA), Chicago (USA), Dallas (USA), London (UK), Frankfurt (Germany), Hong Kong (China), Kansas City (USA), New York City (USA), San Jose (USA), Shanghai (China), Queenstown (Singapore) and Sydney (Australia). Although the founders began as application developers for end-users, they found that most companies did not either know how or want to host their applications. The founders wanted to focus on application development–not hosting–but they were unable to find an opportunity to outsource

731-647: The OpenStack project under the Apache License to become the OpenStack Object Storage component. In April 2012, Rackspace announced it would implement OpenStack Compute as the underlying technology for their Cloud Servers product. This change introduced a new control panel as well as add-on cloud services offering databases , server monitoring , block storage , and virtual networking . In 2015, two Rackspace executives were elected to

774-589: The Relays as a social event comparable to the controversial Freaknik events in Atlanta in the early 2000s). Charles Heimsath, president of an Austin-based real estate research firm, suggested that local malls such as Barton Creek Square and The Domain siphoned off clientele from Highland Mall. Despite Highland Mall's relative proximity and convenience to the University of Texas at Austin , many UT students elect to use these other shopping venues. On June 3, 2009,

817-633: The UK managed hosting market in January 2009 and the ServerBeach brand now competes directly with the UK arm of Rackspace, run by Dominic Monkhouse, former managing director of Rackspace Limited. In October 2006, Mosso Inc. was launched, which experimented with white-labeling hosting services. Eventually, the division became the foundation for the Rackspace Cloud Computing offering. On October 1, 2007, Rackspace acquired Webmail.us,

860-495: The company named Amar Maletira as its new CEO. In December 2022 Rackspace suffered a major service outage which affected all their hosted Exchange users (customers who bought email services from Rackspace that involved instances of Microsoft Exchange hosted on Rackspace's servers). After initial investigation Rackspace declared the incident a 'security incident' and said it had powered down its servers to protect customer data which some commentators speculated might be indicative of

903-921: The company was named as one of the top 100 places to work by Fortune. On August 8, 2008, Rackspace opened for trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "RAX" after its initial public offering (IPO) in which it raised $ 187.5 million. The initial public offering included 15,000,000 shares of its common stock at a price of $ 12.50 per share. The IPO did not do well in the public market and lost about 20% of its initial price almost immediately. At around 3:45 PM CST December 18, 2009, Rackspace experienced an outage for customers using their Dallas–Fort Worth data center – including those of Rackspace Cloud. On September 8, 2010, Rackspace received national attention when they decided to discontinue providing web hosting service to one of their customers, Dove World Outreach Center . This

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946-725: The company. On November 12, 2004, the Rouse Company was sold to General Growth Properties. In 2012, General Growth Properties spun off 30 "class B" malls into Rouse Properties , a new real estate investment trust named after (but otherwise unrelated to) The Rouse Company. Rackspace Rackspace Technology, Inc. is an American cloud computing company based in San Antonio, Texas . It also has offices in Blacksburg , Virginia and Austin, Texas , as well as in Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, India, Dubai, Switzerland,

989-629: The company. The Moss-Rouse Company was founded as a FHA mortgage company with a loan from Hunter Moss's sister. Rouse leveraged his knowledge as loan guarantee specialist at the Federal Housing Administration to establish a Baltimore-based mortgage company specializing in FHA backed loans. Moss-Rouse hired a World War Two Navy friend, Churchill G. Carey from Connecticut General, who in turn provided capital for future projects. Carey would hold positions ranging from president to CEO of

1032-612: The former Dillard's anchor space, but plans were shelved when the company was acquired by an outside investor. In 2018, it was announced that the former Dillard's store would be remodeled into a two-level television studio that will house Austin PBS affiliate KLRU as well as ACC's television station. Over the long term, space not used by the college at the Highland Mall site will be available for private mixed-use development. Various mixed-use apartment and retail buildings have opened in

1075-685: The former assistant attorney general of Maryland, Mathias J. DeVito , left the Rouse-owned legal firm of DLA Piper to replace James W. Rouse as President of the Rouse Company, and Rouse became Chairman. DeVito cut staff from 1,700 to 500 to keep the company afloat in 1975. In 1974, the Columbia development got a political boost as the population of Columbia supported a slate of at-large council candidates with Columbia interests, including Ruth U. Keeton , Lloyd Knowles, and Columbia's city manager, Richard L. Anderson. In 1979, Simon H. Schuer acquired

1118-570: The hosting work. Eventually, the founders realized that it would be better to create a product to serve the hosting need and launch it as a company. Rackspace was launched in October 1998 with Richard Yoo as its CEO . Although most hosting companies focused on the technology end of hosting, Rackspace created its "Fanatical Support" offering to focus on service and support. On March 28, 2000, Rackspace received funding through lead investor Norwest Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital . George J. Still, Jr., Managing Partner at Norwest, subsequently joined

1161-466: The mall's former parking lot; the east side of the parking lot has been repurposed in to an urban park called "St. John's Encampment Commons", referencing the former African-American Baptist encampment that took place on the site. Rouse Company The Rouse Company , founded by Hunter Moss and James W. Rouse in 1939, was a publicly held shopping mall and community developer from 1956 until 2004, when General Growth Properties (GGP) purchased

1204-421: The mortgage company subsidiary. In 1952-1953 the company built one of the first modern architecture office buildings on Saratoga Street in Baltimore, while also dropping its commercial lending business line. Jim Rouse hired his brother, Willard Rouse II , in 1952, and partner, Hunter Moss, phased out of operations, selling his shares of the company, while remaining temporarily on the board of directors. The firm

1247-485: The project back to Rouse for $ 120 million at a net loss. Rouse created the subsidiary company The American City Corporation to take advantage of the National Urban Policy and New Community Development Act of 1970 , A HUD program which granted developers incentives and loans to build Title VII "New Towns" with mandatory percentages of low income housing projects. Rouse's former ACTION member, Leo Molinaro

1290-575: The stadium project. On September 1, 2012, the mall's owners filed for bankruptcy. On April 30, 2015, Highland Mall officially closed after 44 business years. In 2012, Austin Community College purchased Highland Mall to redevelop the site as a regional education center. The first phase of ACC's Highland Campus opened in Fall 2014. The first phase includes classrooms, labs, study areas, library and media center, student commons, and ACCelerator,

1333-469: The suit is part of a scheme to help Dillard's get out of its lease early. As Austin grew and expanded in the years since Highland Mall's opening, the demographics of the surrounding neighborhoods, once considered somewhat upscale, remained stagnant; the mall is the closest major regional shopping center serving the eastern portion of the city, which has traditionally been populated primarily by working-class African American residents. Highland Mall had developed

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1376-651: The system of Public-Private partnerships that Rouse would use worldwide to minimize risk in developments using public debt. The business was given its own postal office, the American Cities Station in 1977. The Columbia development was marketed as a progressive community for all races. In 1971, the company responded to pressure from the NAACP that the company was absent of African Americans at all management levels and its businesses in Columbia were predominantly white owned. The company responded with an affirmative action program in November 1971. In 1973,

1419-665: Was a former planner with the National Capital Planning Commission proposing planned cities, and was a proponent of public-private partnerships. Columbia Research and Development was founded as a public company and Howard Research and Development was formed as a Rouse subsidiary in 1956 to raise capital for four mall projects and later to facilitate the Columbia Project with Connecticut General and Chase Manhattan as stakeholder with interest deferred loans. In 1966 The James W Rouse Company

1462-435: Was acquired by Dillard's ; the store received a complete renovation in 1993. In 1992, Dillard's opened a second store in the mall in the space that formerly housed Scarbrough's. By 2008, two of the mall's seven retail sectors were closed. Press reports described the mall as "in decline" and that the mall was "likely to be demolished in 2010" to make way for a mixed-used development. On June 26, 2009, Yahoo! reported that it

1505-764: Was filed on December 12, 2022, by Cole & Van Note for tens of thousands of businesses who lost access to their emails and services due to ransomware users. Stephenson, et al. v. Rackspace Technology, Inc. This class action was dismissed by the judge in San Antonio in May, 2023. In January 2024, Rackspace moved its San Antonio Global Headquarters from Windcrest ( The Castle ) to the RidgeWood Plaza II office building, located in north-central San Antonio. On September 13, 2007, Rackspace announced it has acquired email hosting provider Webmail.us, based in Blacksburg, Virginia. On October 22, 2008, Rackspace announced it

1548-527: Was in reaction to Dove World's pastor Terry Jones ' plan to burn several copies of the Qur'an on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks . Rackspace claims that this violated their company policy. This move came under criticism, notably from Terry Jones himself, who described it as an "indirect attack on our freedom of speech ." Others questioned the appropriateness of Rackspace's action, stating that there

1591-675: Was leaving the company on May 16 to work for a smaller private company in a different city. In May 2017, Rackspace named Joe Eazor as its new CEO. In April 2019, the company named Kevin Jones as its new CEO. In June 2020 it changed its name to Rackspace Technology. In August 2020 Rackspace Technology opened for trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "RXT" after its initial public offering (IPO). The Initial public offering of 33,500,000 shares of its common stock at an initial public offering price of $ 21.00 per share. In September 2022

1634-399: Was one of "America's Most Endangered Malls": While gleaming new stores have been springing up in some parts of Austin, this 38-year-old mall along I-35 has struggled to keep stores open--and avoid embarrassing controversies. Anchor JCPenney left in 2006, and this year Dillard's sued the mall's owners, claiming they let the mall become a "ghost town." The owners countersued , claiming that

1677-755: Was purchasing cloud storage provider Jungle Disk and VPS provider SliceHost. On February 16, 2012, Rackspace acquired SharePoint911, a Microsoft SharePoint consulting company based in Cincinnati, Ohio . On May 25, 2017, Rackspace announced an agreement to acquire TriCore Solutions. On September 11, 2017, Rackspace announced plans to acquire Datapipe . On September 17, 2018, Rackspace announced it had acquired RelationEdge. On November 4, 2019, Rackspace announced plans to acquire Onica. Other acquisitions include Cloudkick , Anso Labs, Mailgun, ObjectRocket , Exceptional Cloud Services, and ZeroVM . On January 18, 2022, Rackspace announced it had acquired

1720-602: Was renamed The Rouse Company . The company has been credited as the pioneer of the first successful food court in an enclosed shopping mall, when the food court at the Sherway Mall in Toronto opened in 1971. It followed an unsuccessful attempt at the Plymouth Meeting Mall in 1968, which reportedly failed because it was "deemed too small and insufficiently varied." The company moved its headquarters to

1763-952: Was renamed the James W. Rouse & Company, Inc. , with Rouse owning 50% equity, his brother, Willard, 10%, and 40%, to company officers. The James W. Rouse Company built some of the first enclosed shopping malls, and it pioneered the development of festival marketplaces , such as Jacksonville Landing in Jacksonville , Faneuil Hall in Boston , South Street Seaport in New York City , Harborplace in Baltimore , and Bayside Marketplace in Miami . They also developed The Shops at National Place in downtown Washington, D.C. that opened in 1984–85. On 20 June 1966, The James W. Rouse Company

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1806-506: Was restructured as the Rouse Company, adding Howard Research and Development (HRD) as a separate entity shielded Rouse Corporation from debt liability of the Columbia development. HRD lost money, with new rules affecting the parent company as well. In 1974, HRD was refinanced. Columbia Development Corporation was formed a subsidiary of HRD using subcontracted Rouse Company employees. In 1985 CIGNA (Connecticut General) divested its interest in HRD and

1849-476: Was selected to run the subdivision. The symposiums held by the company gathered together investors like George Mitchell, who would go on to develop Woodlands, Texas using the Columbia model. The subsidiary was based at "Two Wincopin" in the second office building in built in Columbia in 1968. It was renamed the American City Building, using the subsidiary to lease the empty space and develop

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