Rackspace Managed Hosting, the fastest-growing managed hosting provider, today announced that it has signed a hosting agreement with Atari Inc. (Nasdaq: ATAR), one of the world’s largest and best-known developers of interactive entertainment. Rackspace also announced a new business alliance with Internap, the market leader for intelligent route-control solutions, and together the companies will provide hosting and network performance solutions for all of Atari’s consumer-facing web and selected intranet sites.

“We sought a managed hosting provider that shared our own philosophy of strong customer service and support,” said Glenn Magala, vice president of Management Information Systems for Atari. “We were looking for a partner that could meet our expected growth requirements and had solid experience with enterprise Linux. Rackspace met those needs, and its alliance with Internap helped solidify our decision.”

Rackspace hosts more than 20 web servers that handle Atari’s entire global network of external-facing sites, as well as some Atari intranet services. Atari leverages web-based resources to market, sell and support its 1,000-title catalog of popular franchises. Consumers visit Atari web sites to find games by platform and genre, to access demos and free downloads and to access a range of Atari player community resources.

“Atari is respected as the pioneering name in interactive gaming and as the developer of many of today’s most popular titles,” said Glenn Reinus, senior vice president of Worldwide Sales, Rackspace Managed Hosting. “As such, Atari recognized early on the importance of web-based marketing and support for its global customer base, and the need for an absolutely reliable web infrastructure to support those online channels.”

Rackspace provides Atari with a fully managed hosting solution built upon Dell PowerEdge servers running Red Hat Enterprise Linux, complete with multiple firewalls, load balancers and a Storage Area Network. Atari now utilizes the Linux open source operating system almost exclusively for its web-based operations, and cited Rackspace’s experience with enterprise-class Linux applications as a key reason for choosing the managed hosting company.

Additionally, Rackspace and Internap have formed a new business alliance to target the enterprise marketplace for mission critical, web-based applications where bullet proof infrastructure is vital. The partnership includes a joint referral and marketing agreement between the two companies.

“The combination of Rackspace hosting and exceptional customer service, along with intelligent routing solutions from Internap, gives Atari a tremendously efficient and reliable Internet infrastructure solution,” said Dave Abrahamson, vice president of Sales at Internap. “We view our alliance with Rackspace as an opportunity to bring faster, smarter and more secure Internet performance to enterprise-class companies, and Atari is a perfect example of how that synergy can work.” Internap provides Atari a direct gigabit connection to the Internet and leverages Rackspace’s tier-one, multi-homed network as a failover solution. Additionally, Rackspace implemented the Internap(R) Flow Control Platform for its high-performance network services. Internap FCP 5000 devices have been installed at Rackspace’s network facilities in Texas and Virginia, helping Rackspace boost its network performance by as much as 20 to 40 percent, while also giving them more control over their bandwidth costs.