VMware-Powered Rackspace Private Cloud Preps for Debut

PRESS RELEASE — VMware VMworld — LAS VEGAS, NV–(Marketwired – August 29, 2016) – Rackspace^® (NYSE: RAX), a VMware vCloud Air Network partner, today announced from VMworld® that it will support VMware Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) technologies including VMware NSX®, Virtual SAN™ and vRealize® Suite as a part of Rackspace Private Cloud powered by VMware. The offering, available in early access in October 2016, will accelerate enterprises’ journey from their data centers to the hybrid cloud by transitioning on-premises workloads into a Rackspace-hosted SDDC environment.

Rackspace Private Cloud powered by VMware helps enable enterprises to run, migrate or extend their on-premises workloads into a dedicated single-tenant private cloud. With this new offering, Rackspace is extending support beyond VMware compute virtualization to include network virtualization, software-defined storage and cloud management platform support. This will give customers native access to VMware SDDC technologies with the enhanced security of a single-tenant private cloud, backed by Fanatical Support®.

“With more than a decade’s worth of VMware operational expertise gained from operating thousands of virtual machines and hypervisors on a global scale, Rackspace is well positioned to extend support capabilities to VMware SDDC technologies,” said Kaushik Balasubramanian, senior director of VMware Practice at Rackspace. “This is a logical step toward helping facilitate enterprise adoption of the hybrid cloud model, while accelerating businesses’ journey toward the software-defined model of infrastructure. This also furthers our company mission to provide the best expertise and support for the world’s leading clouds.”{ad}

Rackspace support for VMware SDDC technologies allows customers to offload daily management while gaining the following benefits:

“VMware software-defined data center technologies aim to meet enterprise demand for a solution that will ease adoption and automation of the cloud,” said Geoff Waters, vice president, Global Service Providers at VMware. “We are excited to strengthen our alignment with …

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… Rackspace, a strategic vCloud Air Network partner, as the company extends its Fanatical Support to the SDDC stack to help bring this technology to more enterprises across the globe. We look forward to our continued collaboration.”

According to Gartner, “For data center and infrastructure software providers, investing in the development of appropriate and disruptive SDDC technologies is essential. Customers and prospects are looking for benefits such as improved agility and reduced capital expenditure (capex), which SDDC technologies can deliver. SDDC also includes features and capabilities such as abstraction, instrumentation and policy management, which should be programmable, automated and orchestrated. The combination of these capabilities fosters innovations that optimize infrastructure and application use of underlying infrastructure.”¹

Rackspace support for VMware SDDC will be available in early access in the U.S. in October 2016. To learn more about Rackspace Private Cloud powered by VMware, visit: http://go.rackspace.com/dedicated-servers-govmware-getsddc.

¹ Gartner, SDx: Build and Market Software-Defined Data Center Offerings Primer for 2016, Fabrizio Biscotti, Roger W. Cox, Michael Warrilow, Joe Skorupa, Naresh Singh, 28 January 2016

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About Rackspace
Rackspace (NYSE: RAX), the #1 managed cloud company, helps businesses tap the power of cloud computing without the complexity and cost of managing it on their own. Rackspace engineers deliver specialized expertise, easy-to-use tools, and Fanatical Support® for leading technologies developed by AWS, Google, Microsoft, OpenStack, VMware and others. The company serves customers in 120 countries, including more than half of the FORTUNE 100. Rackspace was named a leader in the 2015 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting, and has been honored by Fortune, Forbes, and others as one of the best companies to work for. Learn more at www.rackspace.com.