Rackspace, which prides itself on “fanatical support,” has been open about its failures, communicating with customers directly and through the company's and Twitter account. Open communication and a commitment to fixing technical problems will both be crucial for Rackspace as it attempts to repair damaged credibility, says CEO Lanham Napier.

“Any time we have an incident like this, it does impact our credibility,” Napier said in an interview Friday with Network World. “The only way we earn it back is we have to execute at a high level for a long time.”

Power on June 29 and July 7 hit Rackspace's 144,000-square-foot data center in the Dallas suburb of Grapevine. Rackspace operates nine data centers worldwide for about 60,000 customers. Within the Dallas facility, some customers experienced downtime of about 40 minutes on June 29 and on July 7 some customers suffered downtime of 15 to 20 minutes.

The facility has three “phases,” or physical areas, and both outages hit the same phase, affecting a total of about 2,000 customers, according to Rackspace. Judging by on a recent Network World article, reactions range from anger at Rackspace for not eliminating every point of failure to acceptance that downtime can never be completely prevented and that Rackspace did well in quickly solving the problems and communicating with customers.

“I’m sure there will be some [customers] who are upset with us,” Napier said. “Let’s face it. We let them down. It wouldn't surprise me if some customers leave. I hope most of them stay with us.”