Today Rackspace announced CloudU, a new Education Program and Webinar series starting today. The first webinar, “Revolution Not Evolution: How Cloud Computing Differs from Traditional IT and Why it Matters”, will be held today at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT. Panelists include John Engates, Rackspace CTO; Ben Kepes from Diversity Limited and InformationWeek editor-at-large Charles Babcock.

“Three-hundred people who register to receive more information about CloudU will receive a free copy of Charlie’s book, “Management Strategies for the Cloud Revolution: How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Can’t Afford to Be Left Behind.”

Other monthly webinars and white papers include Cloudonomics: The Economics of Cloud Computing, Understanding the Cloud Stack: SaaS, PaaS and IaaS Say Goodbye to DIY Data Centers: An Infrastructure-as-a-Service Intensive and 8 others. CloudU is an indicator Rackspace is getting more involved with its community and getting more aggressive with its services and offerings. The cloud giant had a number of recent product updates including its recent partnership with Akamai, its acquisition of Cloudkick expanding Rackspace’s turf in cloud management and the launch of two new enterprise services.

Going back to cloud education, Rackspace is not the only one developing initiatives around this area. Juniper recently launched the Continuing Education Program for its partners, and Cisco opened two school buildings at two Indian villages in the Raichur district.