Fanatical Support Finds a Home at Microsoft Azure
Rackspace, a managed cloud hosting company, prides itself on being able to provide fanatical support. Although Rackspace has its own public cloud options, Rackspace has made the bold move to begin supporting clients who have hosted their cloud within the Microsoft Azure infrastructure.
In the past, CloudWedge has published articles questioning whether or not Rackspace is for sale. Since we initially reported on this speculation months ago, rumors have died down about Rackspace being on the acquisition market.
Rackspace’s move to support Microsoft Azure isn’t really a shock to many people in the know. In fact, Rackspace has supported various Microsoft products since the late 90s. John Engates, CTO at Rackspace, mentioned that the deal between Rackspace and Microsoft would officially be announced at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference.
“Much like Linux and Windows are two ecosystems with different buyers, the same goes for cloudsMicrosoft Azure and Azure Pack speak to enterprise buyers who are deep in the Microsoft ecosystem and OpenStack is for other buyers,” says Engates, in an interview with Fortune magazine.
The takeaways from this newly announced relationship will likely help both companies in two different ways. Microsoft Azure clients will be able to have instant access to an army of trained Azure professionals while Rackspace can further expand its operations and potentially grow its company by bringing in additional talent to help out with the new Azure clientel.
It should be noted that this isn’t the first time Rackspace has floated the idea of offering up its “Fanatical” support to another cloud’s customers. Several weeks ago, you might remember a story we wrote about Rackspace hinting that they may begin supporting AWS customers. Although nothing has officially developed on AWS/Rackspace front, we’ll continue to monitor the situation and report any new developments concerning Rackspace and other cloud providers.
