Rackspace: Redefining What It Means to Be a Multicloud Solutions Expert

Hannah Duce, director of strategic alliances at Rackspace Technology, and Edward Kerr, the company’s chief product officer, are quick to point out that different industries have different cloud needs and are often best served by highly customized solutions built to meet their specific needs. It’s a unique mindset at Rackspace, where technology teams serve as trusted guides on the cloud journeys of more than half of the Fortune 100.

“One of the factors behind our success is our excellence and deep technical depth in hybrid and multicloud,” Kerr says. “We certainly do all the fundamentals, whether it’s helping an organization get the most out of their deployments with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, but we also have people with significant expertise that isn’t easily replicable by the vast majority of companies today.”

As an example, Kerr cites a customer who wants to move their on-premises infrastructure based on VMware by Broadcom technology to the cloud, but also has a critical workload in OpenStack. In such a situation, Rackspace teams draw on technical expertise honed over years in both environments.

“Rackspace of course founded OpenStack with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and we remain one of VMware’s earliest and closest partners,” he adds. “When you’re a great partner, who puts in the time and effort to really get to know the people you’re working with, the resulting partnership delivers tremendous value, especially for the enterprise customer.”

It’s a formula that clearly works. In addition to its enviable Fortune 100 presence, Rackspace has more than 7,000 employees and 40 data centers serving businesses of all sizes in 120 countries and across many industries. These include healthcare, manufacturing, nonprofit, education, consumer goods, automotive, food and beverage, travel, retail, government and utilities, to name a few.

“One of the things that has really allowed us to excel across all verticals is the ability of our teams to fully manage and perfect the entire stack all the way down to all the edge applications,” Duce says. “Low latency is then delivered by our high-speed private network that spans our data centers and includes on-ramps to the major hyperscalers.”

This approach is made possible by Rackspace’s dedicated teams, each of whom brings significant industry expertise to their work. Healthcare is just one example.

“Our medical team not only knows Epic electronic medical records inside out, but also the many applications that work with it in a clinical setting,” she adds. “We also bring with us everything that is needed to meet compliance requirements, for example in healthcare, those associated with HIPAA and HITECH.”

Enterprise partners who need a multi-cloud expert

Rackspace, now in its second decade of close partnership with VMware, offers a broad portfolio of private cloud solutions, as well as sovereign clouds for the US and UK, also powered by Broadcom by VMware technologies. The company has even been a test partner for VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF).

“We’ve spent a lot of time with VMware teams over the years beta testing our respective and combined solutions,” Kerr said. “VCF stands out because it includes everything needed to build and operate a great cloud, from security to visibility tools. Most organizations will also find that it delivers tremendous value, a value that increases when they factor in the tools they no longer need to invest in because Broadcom has already delivered them in VCF.”

At Rackspace, VCF, like all technologies, enjoys fanatical support—something Kerr sees as a key differentiator for Rackspace, even as it’s increasingly defined in new ways.

“Customer support used to be about the holiday season or the weekend after an issue,” he says. “Today, people want proactive, fanatical customer support—support that creates automation and safeguards that not only prevent problems before they happen, but also drive the most powerful cloud possible. VCF inherently includes both.”

Kerr points out that businesses want flexibility more than ever, which led Rackspace to create Rackspace Elastic Engineering. With this service, Rackspace brings together a team with very specific expertise and skills in cloud solutions and services. Customers then purchase a number of hours that they can use as they see fit, for as long as they want. It’s part of a concerted effort to proactively meet customer needs.

“Whether you’re looking to optimize your data center, consolidate your data centers, bring your data center business to life, or power your AI projects with our Rackspace AI Anywhere private cloud, we’ll provide you with a cloud that meets the unique needs of your industry and the unique needs of your business,” Duce added. “Our ability to deliver a hybrid or multi-cloud solution, along with all the managed services and technical expertise needed to realize its full potential, is why we thrive in Fortune 100 companies and on Main Street.”

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