New service and reference architecture built on Open Stack
The folks at Rackspace cloud builders have released a new service called Rackspace Cloud: Private Edition. They have released the reference architecture to build your own Open Stack based private cloud based on the best practices and experience of Rackspace’s own team. You can build this private cloud in your own data center, in a Rackspace data center or even other hosting providers. Best of all Rackspace Cloud Builders will manage your cloud for you wherever it is. This represents a new step in cloud management, Cloud Management As A Service (CM-a-a-S).
Why not CMaaS? We are well on our way towards everything IT being consumed as a service via the cloud, so why shouldn’t the cloud be managed as a service itself. The fact that it is based on Open Stack means customers are building their clouds on what is quickly becoming a de facto standard in cloud architecture. Private Edition Cloud from Rackspace goes something like this:
I had a chance to chat with Mark Collier, VP of biz dev and marketing and Jim Curry, GM of Cloud Builders. According to them a key value that Rackspace is literally giving away is the reference architecture. While Open Stack is of course open, setting it up and using it in the real world takes some know how. Why not leverage the experience of the guys who literally invented it?
So how does Rackspace benefit from giving away the reference architecture? Well every Open Stack instance represents another CMaaS opportunity for them. Also Rackspace is certifying deployment partners throughout the world to help.
According to their website the private edition provides:
Of course are Private Clouds a step on the way towards public clouds or will there always be a need for private clouds is a question that is not answered here, nor is there an answer apparent right now. But if a private cloud is the way for you, it would seem an Open Stack based one managed by Rackspace is not a bad option.
