Rackspace extends Azure Fanatical Support footprint to Europe

Europe At Golden Sunrise - View From SpaceRackspace has announced the unlimited availability launch of its Fanatical Support services for Microsoft Azure customers in the UK, Benelux and DACH regions, as well as two new service levels, Navigator and Aviator.

The Fanatical Support was previously available in US markets, though the expansion puts the Azure service in line with its other offerings, such as for Amazon Web Services. The Navigator service offers access to tools and automation, whereas Aviator does the same, and goes further to offer a fully-managed Azure experience, providing increased man-hours, custom architecture design and all-year support, as well as performing environment build and deployment activities.

“It’s been nearly a year since Rackspace announced Fanatical Support for Microsoft Azure, which we launched to assist customers who want to run IaaS workloads on the powerful Azure cloud, but prefer not to architect, secure and operate them first-hand,” said Jeff DeVerter, Chief Technologist for Microsoft Technology at Rackspace.

“Our launch of this offering marked an important expansion of our strategy to offer the world’s best expertise and service on industry-leading technologies, and is a natural progression of our 14-year relationship with Microsoft.”

As part of the announcement, the confirmed Help for Heroes would be one of the first UK organizations to utilize the new offering. The company has been utilizing the Azure platform for some time now, as a means to counter website downtime during periods of high traffic volume during fundraising campaigns.

“Being able to scale up quickly is important, but so is scaling down during times that are quieter,” said Charles Bikhazi, Head of Application Services at Help for Heroes. “As with any charity, we’re always looking to make cost savings where possible and that’s exactly what this solution has delivered. Now, we only pay for infrastructure that’s actually being used which ensures that costs don’t spiral out of control. The new offering gives us access to this much needed scalability and resilience without the burden of having to run the platform ourselves.”