Category Archives: Taylor Rhodes

Rackspace to add AWS to Fanatical Support services

Rhodes: "We are positioned to become the dominant service provider for these cloud platforms"

Rhodes: “We are positioned to become the dominant service provider for these cloud platforms”

Rackspace is currently developing a Fanatical Support offering for AWS customers, the company’s latest move aimed at shifting its business towards managed cloud services.

Speaking about the company’s second quarter financial results earlier this week Rackspace president and chief exec Taylor Rhodes said the company plans to extend its Fanatical Support and managed cloud services to the AWS platform “later this year.”

“As I’ve advised you in earlier calls, we don’t expect significant revenue for managed services on other cloud providers in 2015, but we’re excited about the prospects for this business. We estimate that the addressable market is in the multiple billions of dollars annually and is growing in the high-double digits,” Rhodes explained in a call with analysts and journalists.

“Because of our scale and reputation for Fanatical Support, we are positioned to become the dominant service provider for these cloud platforms,” he said.

The new comes about a month after Rackspace announced it would extend its Fanatical Support services to Microsoft Azure’s public and private cloud infrastructure. The company said customers will be able to buy either bundled Azure infrastructure with support, or just support services. The offerings will be available first in the US, with plans for an international rollout “through early 2016.”

Rackspace to offer support for, resell Microsoft Azure

Rackspace is set to offer support for Azure customers and resell Microsoft's public and private cloud technology

Rackspace is set to offer support for Azure customers and resell Microsoft’s public and private cloud technology

In another move aimed at shifting its business towards managed (cloud) services Rackspace this week announced it will extend its ‘fanatical support’ services to Microsoft Azure public and private cloud infrastructure.

Rackspace said customers will be able to buy either bundled Azure infrastructure with support, or just support services. The offerings will be available first in the US, with plans for an international rollout “through early 2016.”

“Our strategy at Rackspace has always been to provide the world’s best expertise and service for industry-leading technologies — including a broad selection of Microsoft products,” said Taylor Rhodes, chief executive at Rackspace.

“We’re pleased to expand our relationship with Microsoft and the options we provide for our customers by offering Fanatical Support for Azure. By adding support for Azure to our portfolio, we can now serve customers who want public, private and hybrid cloud environments built on the Microsoft Azure Stack,” Rhodes said.

Rackspace already offers a range of Microsoft-based managed services and support but the latest move will see the company double down on the service component for the newly re-architected Azure Stack, including Microsoft’s own public cloud.

The move is also yet another step in Rackspace’s broader transformation from a pure-play hosting and cloud provider towards a managed services and managed cloud company.

Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise group said: “Fanatical Support for Azure and Azure Stack adds Rackspace’s industry-leading support to Microsoft’s deep experience with the hybrid cloud, creating a win-win for customers. With this relationship, our mutual customers will have even more options for migrating their diverse IT workloads to the cloud.”