RackSpace and AWS Partnership on Managed Services Has the Potential to Happen
RackSpace prides itself in being the #1 managed cloud company in the world. By that account, you could dub AWS the #1 largest un-managed cloud company in the world. Comments by RackSpace CEO Taylor Rhodes seems to point to a potential partnership between the two IaaS providers. The partnership reportedly could spill over to Google Cloud Platform as well.
The deal seems to revolve around the “Managed” part of the cloud. RackSpace has fanatical support and if you’ve ever seen that Youtube video of their corporate office, you’ll understand why everyone seems so happy to come to work. RackSpace is an innovator of the cloud and their employees work on projects with customers from all different facets of business. RackSpace has been managing clouds for years.
AWS could see value in this. In late March, AWS began offering its own managed cloud services. Analysts such as Reinhardt Krause from Investors believes that a RackSpace and AWS partnership has the potential to happen where RackSpace could help manage AWS cloud services.
In an interview with IBD, RackSpace CEO Taylor Rhodes said, “We’re working on this model; it’s very interesting, we’re feeling a pull from our customers and a pull from the market.”
Rhodes cautions, “It’s important not to jump the gun. We have people working on it. There is an intent to build a business model. But there is no agreement in place.”
Although no agreement is in place, it makes sense that RackSpace could help managed customers on the AWS front. RackSpace is well equipped to do perform managed tasks on cloud resources and RackSpace receives rave reviews because of their knowledgeable and helpful staff.
RackSpace CEO Rhodes says, “We think about our value-add being less about the infrastructure and more about managing applications.” Rhodes adds, “If the market is demanding other cloud technologies in addition to ours, then ought we not (to) allow them to choose those technologies and let us add value by making applications work in those (public) environments?”
