Rackspace found that many of its customers, particularly small and mid-sized organizations, needed help adopting cloud technology. These customers wanted to establish secure, stable OpenStack private clouds with the agility and flexibility of public cloud offerings. However, OpenStack technology is complex, and it changes rapidly. “Most of our customers . . . [say], ‘We want a private cloud. We want to be on OpenStack open technology. But we don’t know how to do it,’” said Laron Tangeman, senior manager of operations at Rackspace.

To expand its OpenStack-as-a-Service portfolio, and offer a choice of technology with expert support, Rackspace turned to long-time partner Red Hat. Together, they created Rackspace Private Cloud powered by Red Hat (RPC-R). This supported offering is based on Red Hat technologies and includes Rackspace’s Fanatical Support, a 24x7 support model with real-time monitoring. “It’s really about taking the complexity out of the technology,” said Dan Sheppard, senior product manager at Rackspace. “We’re able to accelerate [customers’] digital transformation and remove a lot of the challenges of deploying and adopting the technology.”

With RPC-R, Rackspace customers no longer need to worry about setting up their infrastructure and components. The solution offers a standardized, virtualized cloud environment managed through a single interface, offering ease of use and massive scalability. The solution helps customers automate to become more efficient, reducing costs and deployment time. “I’ve been working with Red Hat OpenStack Platform for the last 18 months and haven’t gotten a single late-night, panicked phone call,” said Tangeman. “I can sleep soundly at night, knowing we have this stable product in customers’ environments.”