Google vs Amazon Cloud Price War: Rackspace Weighs In

By samdizzy

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) are locked in a cloud storage price war. Now, Rackspace (NYSE: RAX) is reminding partners that cloud customers want good pricing combined with exceptional service.

Google, Amazon and Rackspace each ranked among the world’s top 100 cloud services providers for 2012. 

In a prepared statement, Rackspace President Lew Moorman said: “Cloud computing customers tell us they want good pricing and exceptional service, and offering one without the other simply won¹t cut it in today’s environment.”

Without mentioning potential rivals by name, Moorman’s statement comes shortly after Google Cloud Storage and Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) cut prices last week. Amazon Web Services has had roughly 24 price cuts over the years, and Google had two last week. The pricing jabs occurred amid Amazon’s big AWS re:Invent conference, which attracted roughly 6,000 attendees.

Rackspace, meanwhile, has been building out and unifying its partner program over the past year. The company offers aggressive pricing, but Rackspace’s real differentiator has always been fanatical service — from top-notch phone support to deep technical support for specific services like  hosted applications.

While Amazon and Google have been expanding their support services, most folks perceive that those two cloud computing giants are more difficult to navigate during an outage or IT issue.