Rackspace MSP On Free OpenStack, Teams Offers: ‘Be the Change Catalyst’

Early last month, cloud computing provider Rackspace funneled millions of dollars into providing OpenStack resources and Microsoft Teams to end users for free, for six months. The vendor made the move as the COVID-19 pandemic forced organizations to support remote work. The problem was, many of them lacked the cloud infrastructure to do this well or securely. Rackspace stepped into the gap, equipping its managed service providers to help clients immediately. While the limited-time offers on OpenStack, Rackspace’s 10-year-old open-source platform for private and public clouds, and Teams do not contribute direct revenue, they showcase the value of the channel.

“There’s no commission, but it’s a way of finding free opportunities,” Lisa McLin, Rackspace’s channel chief, told Channel Futures in May. “Partners are looking at long-term relationships and this is the goodwill they provide.”

Caliber Solutions’ Dave Bailey

With that in mind, Channel Futures wanted to revisit the free Rackspace offers six weeks after they debuted. We contacted three Rackspace MSPs; one, Caliber Solutions, responded. In this Q&A, find out how the Texas-based channel partner is helping enterprises operate more efficiently during the coronavirus crisis. We spoke with Dave Bailey, principal consultant at Caliber Solutions.

Channel Futures: How receptive have your clients been to offers to deploy Teams and OpenStack at no cost for the next few months?

Dave Bailey: The pandemic posed a number of challenges for our clients, but the one thing that was more present than ever before was that virtually every employee that could work from home was working from home. The best, most well thought-out BC/DR plans failed to address the majority of employees working from home for extended periods of time. Though many of our clients had [Microsoft] Teams in their environment, we found that many had not broadly adopted the platform. The ability to rapidly scale adoption in a secure, flexible and cost-effective environment proved to be essential and OpenStack was a catalyst for that.

CF: What has the use of these services meant for them during the pandemic?

DB: There are a number of qualitative and quantitative data points that each of our clients could attribute to this question. Some responses would be similar for all of our clients and some would be unique to each client. I think if you asked any of our clients what one of the biggest areas of concern they may have had with regard to business continuity prior to the pandemic was what they had not considered. No one considered a global pandemic in early 2020, which caused businesses to enact methods and procedures that were not fully planned for. The use of [Teams and OpenStack] helped to ease the challenges of rapid deployment at scale, something that would have been extremely difficult for even the best developed BC plan to account for.

CF: Similarly, what does that adoption mean for you and your business?

DB: Caliber exists to help our clients look inward and challenge the status quo. Events like this, something that has not had a rival in over 100 years, causes everything to be questioned. We never recommend change for the sake of changing but many organizations are hesitant to bring new technologies into their organizations for fear of the impact the actual change will have on the business. When this pandemic happened, everyone was forced to…

…change, whether they wanted to or not. If you believe that out of something bad, something good always happens, then we believe that when we face challenges like this, the fact that our clients will view digital transformation as a necessary journey, not a destination, helps.

CF: Are you able to provide for-charge cloud services alongside the Rackspace Teams and OpenStack services? If so, what are they?

DB: The short answer is yes. The needs of our clients vary greatly but there is always something they look to us for help with. As our clients transition to more cloud-native platforms, the need for security and compliance continues to grow. Security as a Service and Chief Information Security Officer as a Service continue to be areas our clients are interested in.

CF: What advice would you extend to your partner peers about helping enterprises and other organizations through the pandemic?

DB: These are unprecedented times. Challenge the status quo and don’t let your clients settle, regardless of how easy it would be to do so. The technology solutions that solved yesterday’s challenges have caused the technology challenges organizations face today, and as such, will require different ways of thinking. One of my favorite quotes is by Robin Sharma: ‘Knowing what to do and not doing it is the same as not knowing what to do.’ Correlating that quote to the client environment, our clients in many cases know they need to transform and become more agile, but for many reasons they choose not to. Be the change catalyst for your clients and educate them on what to do and stay with them as they transform.

CF: Other thoughts to share?

DB: Try to find ways to introduce rapid-scale, flexible platforms like Rackspace Teams and OpenStack to your clients. Your clients will undoubtedly appreciate the introduction and resulting business outcomes.