Rackspace Launches Mobile-Ready Cloud Stacks and Partner Program

Open cloud company Rackspace Hosting (NYSE: RAX) is looking to make it easier for mobile app developers to work with hybrid clouds. Rackspace's mobile cloud stacks for developers will provide preconfigured stacks. That lets developers focus on creating apps instead. Here are the details. 

Rackspace CTO John Engates said many developers, especially those involved in startups, view the back end of mobile application development as new territory.

"We want to make the developer's job very simple," he said. "Monitoring and scalability testing are important to enable developers in community the time to market. We want that to be as short of a process as possible."

The first pre-installed stack is available today. It is a PHP-based backend, comprising LAMP and open source caching software. The configurations included in the stack are Linux (Ubuntu), Apache web server, MySQL, PHP, Varnishd (HTTP accelerator), Memcache and the PHP-memcache extensions, and The Alternative PHP Cache (APC). To receive access to the stack, interested parties must sign up for a Managed Cloud account.

Rackspace is also prepping similar offerings for the Ruby on Rails and Node.js backends. 

Rackspace is extending its  "Fanatical Support," to these mobile app developers, providing them with more than 1,400 cloud specialists. Specialists are available 24/7 and provide support for day-to-day management of applications, in addition to monitoring and managing.

Engates said Rackspace will be there to manage applications at night, so that someone is always available. He added that developers will reach a human, instead of a machine. 

Rackspace introduced a new mobile technology partner program to further strengthen its mobile cloud platform, where developers can gain access to software development kits (SDKs), testing, and monitoring capabilities from partners such as New Relic, SOASTA, Sencha, Stackmob, Feedhenry, and Trigger.io.

Rackspace said participating partners must be reliable, must have reached a certain maturity, need to scale well, and must be complimentary to Rackspace's tools, services, and portfolio. The company wants to assemble a team that works with Rackspace and could help power apps.