Rackspace: Taking the Cloud Journey to New Heights
Reinhard Waldinger, Managing DirectorWith statistics predicting that 83 percent of enterprise workloads will be on the cloud by 2020, organizations across the board are jumping on the cloud bandwagon. Skeptics that were initially warded off by security concerns are today singing a different tune and completely sold on the massive cost and scalability benefits that cloud brings. Cloud is also the bedrock for the technologies that power digital transformation, and long story short, organizations just can't afford to turn their back on cloud.
While the power of cloud is incontestable, the reality is cloud can also contribute to an organization's nemesis, if done wrong.
For starters choosing the right cloud service provider from a plethora of players and the accurate cloud type—public, private, hybrid, or multi—are critical factors to success. Failure to find and deploy the right environment contributes to unused cloud resources and unwarranted expenses. Successful cloud adoption often requires expertise beyond what most line of business managers and in-house IT teams currently possess. As businesses face the unique combination of complexity, pressure, and opportunity that cloud and digital transformation promises, what they need is expert intervention that only a managed cloud services provider can bring.
One company that tops the list for being a trusted partner when it comes to unbiased, modern IT cloud services is Rackspace, the global expert in empowering organizations and helping them succeed in their cloud and digital transformation journey. Founded in the U.S., Rackspace has a wide footprint across the globe and holds a dominant market position specifically in the APAC region. Their main hubs include Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, China, as well as India.
"Rackspace delivers the best customer experience in the industry through ‘fanatical experience’"
“Our mission at Rackspace is very straight forward,” begins Reinhard Waldinger, Managing Director of Rackspace International. "We accelerate the value of the cloud during every phase of the digital transformation. We have disrupted ourselves over five times in two decades. In other words, we ‘get transformation’ because it's part of our DNA and we exist solely to help solve our customers' toughest cloud and business challenges."
The Silver Lining to Cloud
While Rackspace helps its customers choose and implement a cloud solution that perfectly matches their business needs, that's not where it ends. Rackspace also offers full lifecycle management and cloud hosting services alongside access to teams of highly certified cloud experts, in every step of the way. With more than 3,500 certifications, Rackspace is one of the largest technology services company in the market, and the go-to choice for major Fortune 500 companies. Leveraging over 20 years of operating experience and deep industry knowledge, today Rackspace is the undisputable choice and trusted partner for cloud innovation and maximized IT investment.
Adept at all major cloud platforms as well as applications, data, security, managed hosting, and collocation, the length and breadth of Rackspace's services and solutions portfolio is unmatched in the industry. Their technology services are fully-integrated, easy-to-use, and tailored completely to suit a customer’s requirements. To give a brief overview, Rackspace provides support for every major public cloud provider from AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform to Alibaba Cloud. On the private cloud space, Rackspace's services extend to VMware, the full spectrum of Microsoft's offerings, OpenStack, and much more. Going beyond just pure infrastructure as a service, Rackspace even offers state-of-the-art application services to optimize the performance across several ERP systems and e-commerce platforms, such as Oracle Commerce and SAP Hybris.
Keeping in mind that most organizations today have their applications and data spread across several cloud platforms, Rackspace also brings to bear the ultimate in multi-cloud flexibility. They securely connect all the private and public clouds in a client's environment for maximum efficiency. For example, if a client is using both AWS and Microsoft Azure, through Rackconnect, a hybrid connectivity offering, users can access information from both the platforms on one portal without having to toggle between two control panels. “Customers love this unique solution as it not only allows them to operate different clouds as one but also enables them to achieve seamless and stable workloads,” explains Waldinger.
Given Rackspace's customer-first, best-of-breed solutions strategy, it's easy to see why they were the first choice for HK Express, Hong Kong’s low-cost carrier that disrupted the commercial airline industry. As a young airline in a competitive market, HK Express had to stay fast and lean. They needed a technology partner that could provide a seamless booking experience for value-conscious travelers. Today, HK Express utilizes Rackspace's managed hosting solutions, which includes dedicated server hosting and completely relies on them to keep the systems running. HK Express can now focus on their core operations and maintain small internal teams, as a result of which their hiring costs dropped by 30 percent while improving performance significantly.
Fanatical about Cloud and Customers
Whether the customer is a novice in the world of cloud or looking to leverage their existing cloud infrastructure, leave it to Rackspace to determine a cloud strategy that works best for their specific needs. After an involved sales process, it's time for the professional services and solutions engineers to take over who use a consultative approach with the customer to get to the bottom of a problem. During this assessment phase, Rackspace comes out with the solution that is best suited to the problem at hand. For customers with a more mature cloud strategy, the company offers a “fast track” approach to reach the end goals, but in case heavy lifting is required, Rackspace's professional services team comes onboard. Comprising highly trained professionals, subject matter experts, and certified specialists in the various cloud platforms and technologies, the professional services team takes charge of planning, designing, migrating, and optimizing to drive complete cloud transformation. The customer also has access to monthly cloud reviews, 24/7 support, and can reach out to a service delivery manager in case of any problem.
We accelerate the value of the cloud during every phase of digital transformation
Given Rackspace's customer-first, best-of-breed solutions strategy, it's easy to see why they were the first choice for HK Express, Hong Kong’s low-cost carrier that disrupted the commercial airline industry. As a young airline in a competitive market, HK Express had to stay fast and lean. They needed a technology partner that could provide a seamless booking experience for value-conscious travelers. Today, HK Express utilizes Rackspace's managed hosting solutions, which includes dedicated server hosting and completely relies on them to keep the systems running. HK Express can now focus on their core operations and maintain small internal teams, as a result of which their hiring costs dropped by 30 percent while improving performance significantly.
Fanatical about Cloud and Customers
Whether the customer is a novice in the world of cloud or looking to leverage their existing cloud infrastructure, leave it to Rackspace to determine a cloud strategy that works best for their specific needs. After an involved sales process, it's time for the professional services and solutions engineers to take over who use a consultative approach with the customer to get to the bottom of a problem. During this assessment phase, Rackspace comes out with the solution that is best suited to the problem at hand. For customers with a more mature cloud strategy, the company offers a “fast track” approach to reach the end goals, but in case heavy lifting is required, Rackspace's professional services team comes onboard. Comprising highly trained professionals, subject matter experts, and certified specialists in the various cloud platforms and technologies, the professional services team takes charge of planning, designing, migrating, and optimizing to drive complete cloud transformation. The customer also has access to monthly cloud reviews, 24/7 support, and can reach out to a service delivery manager in case of any problem.
A state-of-the-art solutions portfolio is only one half of the story. What's striking about the company’s value proposition, placing them a cut above the rest, is their compulsion to be an unbiased services company with no vested interests when it comes to suggesting a particular cloud technology. "We are thought leaders when it comes to delivering outcomes, and we aren't here to build technology companies. Instead as an IT operator, we act as an extension of your team to help make the best choice and the most from technology investment," reaffirms Waldinger.
In the 20 years of their existence, customers have always been the top priority for the company, which is evident from their concept of "Fanatical Experience." Employees at the company, known as Rackers, are always willing to go through great lengths to address customer issues through the power of proactive, always-on services. The company has over 6,500 professionals globally backing the whole system and promoting a cloud-first, customer-first approach.
An impressive customer success story is that of Tokio Marine Life Insurance Singapore (TMLS) that reached out to Rackspace to manage their public cloud. The client was largely looking for a partner with Azure expertise to ensure strict compliance with regulations for their new life insurance customer portal but what they received from Rackspace was so much more. Rackspace not only lived up to all expectations but ensured TMLS tasted a slice of the famed “Fanatical Experience.” During the project implementation stage, dedicated solutions architects shared valuable technical advice on how to make the best use of security services in Azure. The new customer portal will allow TMLS customers to access their policy information and transact online while improving their experience by filtering all interactions through one connected platform. With over 1,500 Microsoft certifications, Rackspace was able to offer TMLS superior assistance. Building on the success of this year-long project, there are already plans for future collaboration.
Nailing the Cloud Game
Rackspace is always looking at avenues to deliver more value to customers in every possible way, and Rackspace's acquisition of Datapipe, one of the world’s leading providers of managed cloud and hosting services was a step in that direction. The collaboration helped Rackspace further cement their leading position in the market and also improve their reach in the Asia Pacific region. Another major milestone for the company was the acquisition of TriCore Solutions, a prominent application management expert. This merger was in the light of popular requests from clients that wanted Rackspace to expand their managed application capabilities. Tricore's services fully complement Rackspace, enabling them to support mission-critical enterprise applications that companies use to manage functions such as logistics, supply chain, HR, and financial operations.
Giving a glimpse of their future roadmap, Waldinger mentions that “coming up is aggressive international expansion.” The focus will also be directed at expanding their application and professional services. Our near term goal is to be recognized as the best technology services company in the world," he adds.
Taking into account their track record so far and their future roadmap, it easy to see why Rackspace with their differentiated and next-gen cloud services is the leading choice to close the gap between the complex reality of today’s technology needs and the promises of tomorrow.
In the 20 years of their existence, customers have always been the top priority for the company, which is evident from their concept of "Fanatical Experience." Employees at the company, known as Rackers, are always willing to go through great lengths to address customer issues through the power of proactive, always-on services. The company has over 6,500 professionals globally backing the whole system and promoting a cloud-first, customer-first approach.
An impressive customer success story is that of Tokio Marine Life Insurance Singapore (TMLS) that reached out to Rackspace to manage their public cloud. The client was largely looking for a partner with Azure expertise to ensure strict compliance with regulations for their new life insurance customer portal but what they received from Rackspace was so much more. Rackspace not only lived up to all expectations but ensured TMLS tasted a slice of the famed “Fanatical Experience.” During the project implementation stage, dedicated solutions architects shared valuable technical advice on how to make the best use of security services in Azure. The new customer portal will allow TMLS customers to access their policy information and transact online while improving their experience by filtering all interactions through one connected platform. With over 1,500 Microsoft certifications, Rackspace was able to offer TMLS superior assistance. Building on the success of this year-long project, there are already plans for future collaboration.
Nailing the Cloud Game
Rackspace is always looking at avenues to deliver more value to customers in every possible way, and Rackspace's acquisition of Datapipe, one of the world’s leading providers of managed cloud and hosting services was a step in that direction. The collaboration helped Rackspace further cement their leading position in the market and also improve their reach in the Asia Pacific region. Another major milestone for the company was the acquisition of TriCore Solutions, a prominent application management expert. This merger was in the light of popular requests from clients that wanted Rackspace to expand their managed application capabilities. Tricore's services fully complement Rackspace, enabling them to support mission-critical enterprise applications that companies use to manage functions such as logistics, supply chain, HR, and financial operations.
Giving a glimpse of their future roadmap, Waldinger mentions that “coming up is aggressive international expansion.” The focus will also be directed at expanding their application and professional services. Our near term goal is to be recognized as the best technology services company in the world," he adds.
Taking into account their track record so far and their future roadmap, it easy to see why Rackspace with their differentiated and next-gen cloud services is the leading choice to close the gap between the complex reality of today’s technology needs and the promises of tomorrow.
May 30, 2019
Rackspace News
Rackspace Technology partners with Google Cloud to offer generative AI services
Rackspace Technology Taps Palo Alto Networks for Comprehensive Cybersecurity Solutions
SAN ANTONIO -- Rackspace Technology® (NASDAQ: RXT) — the leading end-to-end, multicloud solutions company, today announced that they have chosen Palo Alto Networks, the global cybersecurity leader, to deliver comprehensive cybersecurity solutions to organizations of all sizes, helping customers stay ahead of evolving cyber threats.
With a comprehensive range of services, customers can now protect their network across HQ and branch devices, remote applications, data centers, and the public cloud – all with best-of-breed security solutions. Combining Palo Alto Networks industry-leading Strata Next-Generation Firewalls and Cloud-Delivered Security Services with Rackspace Technology's expertise in multicloud computing and security operations will enable organizations to:
• Protect their data and applications from advanced threats, including ransomware, malware, and data breaches.
• Simplify their security architecture and operations.
• Accelerate their cloud adoption and digital transformation.
"As the threat landscape evolves, enterprises are increasingly vulnerable to new and sophisticated cyberattacks. In response, they are looking for the most advanced technology to enhance their cybersecurity posture and simplify their infrastructure," said BJ Jenkins, President Palo Alto Networks. "We are delighted to be chosen to help Rackspace deliver leading security technology and integrated platforms to customers."
“We are excited to work with Palo Alto Networks to deliver our customers the most comprehensive managed cybersecurity solutions in the market,” said Brian Lillie, President Private Cloud Rackspace Technology. “Together, we can help organizations to protect their data and applications, simplify their security operations, and accelerate their multicloud adoption.”
With a comprehensive range of services, customers can now protect their network across HQ and branch devices, remote applications, data centers, and the public cloud – all with best-of-breed security solutions. Combining Palo Alto Networks industry-leading Strata Next-Generation Firewalls and Cloud-Delivered Security Services with Rackspace Technology's expertise in multicloud computing and security operations will enable organizations to:
• Protect their data and applications from advanced threats, including ransomware, malware, and data breaches.
• Simplify their security architecture and operations.
• Accelerate their cloud adoption and digital transformation.
"As the threat landscape evolves, enterprises are increasingly vulnerable to new and sophisticated cyberattacks. In response, they are looking for the most advanced technology to enhance their cybersecurity posture and simplify their infrastructure," said BJ Jenkins, President Palo Alto Networks. "We are delighted to be chosen to help Rackspace deliver leading security technology and integrated platforms to customers."
“We are excited to work with Palo Alto Networks to deliver our customers the most comprehensive managed cybersecurity solutions in the market,” said Brian Lillie, President Private Cloud Rackspace Technology. “Together, we can help organizations to protect their data and applications, simplify their security operations, and accelerate their multicloud adoption.”
Mastering Cloud Cost Optimisation: Six Essential Steps
James Mercer, Alliance Partner Development Manager APJ, Rackspace Technology
Organisations are always looking for innovative ways to optimise their cloud use while maximising their business value. Cloud financial management (CFM) plays a pivotal role in this process by helping businesses assess, manage and optimise their cloud expenses.
In this post, we explore the six key steps to mastering cost optimisation and how a CFM assessment, based on four essential pillars, can pave the way to success. These six practical steps can help you identify cost optimisation and resource redirection in your organisation.
Step 1: Assessing your cloud environment for costs
A successful cost optimisation journey starts with understanding your current cloud environment. The key is implementing a comprehensive CFM assessment that examines an organisation's cloud maturity, identifies cost drivers and uncovers potential areas of improvement.
To identify actionable cost trend information within the larger set of cost data, you need more than a monthly invoice. You need a dashboard that isolates costs into meaningful subcategories, so you can establish baseline costs as well as track variations and trends. Your dashboard provides visibility into month-to-month, day-to-day and even hour-to-hour trends.
By breaking out costs in a dashboard, you gain insight into the cost for specific components of your architecture, which you can then weigh against the value or budget for that architecture. Further, a dashboard gives you better visibility into cost changes, so that you can proactively address new or changing costs.
Step 2: Monitor cost trends
Through working with hundreds of organizations around the world to optimise their cloud spend, we've identified a few common trends. They are indicators of certain patterns in cloud architecture that can lead to cost concerns and include the following:
• The shark’s fin: This trend is the most common when building out new services. Optimisation is enacted initially. However, costs eventually spike. Then optimisation is assessed again to reign costs back in. This pattern continues in an ever-devolving cycle.
• The climb: This occurs during periods of architectural growth. Costs are expected to increase as use expands. But as both continue to grow, the costs go unchecked, masking any waste or mis-provisioned resources.
• The science experiment: When new development projects are implemented and costs are unknown, the result is a sudden increase, then a levelling off.
• The delayed mistake: This occurs when something new is implemented, but its effectiveness is not immediately obvious. In this case, there may be some time before a reaction can occur.
An awareness of these patterns when monitoring an architecture can save significant time in costs optimisation by addressing potential issues before they occur.
Step 3: Showback sand chargebacks
For a more complex and heterogeneous environment (e.g. multiple unique products or applications), organisations may need more data points to effectively track costs and the ability to isolate costs on a per-application or product basis.
A good allocation strategy provides more meaningful information on the cost of products, which can be used to determine the profitability or value of the products. Allocation strategies are also commonly used to isolate R&D activity. Whichever cost allocation strategies an organization adopts will require some foresight and would ideally be articulated in a clear and consistent organisation-wide policy.
Step 4: Rightsizing to match costs with demand
One of the most common cost management activities relevant to almost all cloud customers is aligning the number and size of provisioned resources to the use needs. In traditional data centre environments, organisations generally account for peak capacity. But in the cloud, it’s better to provision for minimum capacity, with the ability to scale-up resources to meet fluctuations in demand.
Whether you’re undergoing migration or developing a new application, it can be difficult to know what’s crucial for your infrastructure to run efficiently. You may find that you’re overspending on unnecessary resources.
Step 5: Employing financial instruments
Savings plans and reserved instances (RI) are integral to reigning costs in your cloud environment. Discounts may be available on committed use and are an ideal layer to place on top of rightsizing or autoscaling efforts, or to implement on sustained always-on workloads. Financial instruments usually represent an opportunity for cost optimisation because they don’t require any technical implementation.
Step 6: Understanding how the four pillars of CFM can help you
Sound CFM practices can foster a culture focused on saving within your organisation, empowering you to invest in more useful technology consulting and services to drive innovation in your business.
As a trusted Amazon Web Services (AWS) partner for conducting CFM assessment, Rackspace Technology offers a comprehensive assessment to evaluate your company's CFM maturity across these four vectors:
1. Cost optimisation
2. Planning and forecasting
3. Cloud financial operations
4. Measurement and accountability
To help identify your opportunities for cost optimisation and resource redirection insights, book your complimentary three-hour workshop*. It includes an analysis and recommendations report and a 30-minute presentation of the findings with benchmark comparative data on your CFM maturity.
*This offer is for APJ-based customers only.
Organisations are always looking for innovative ways to optimise their cloud use while maximising their business value. Cloud financial management (CFM) plays a pivotal role in this process by helping businesses assess, manage and optimise their cloud expenses.
In this post, we explore the six key steps to mastering cost optimisation and how a CFM assessment, based on four essential pillars, can pave the way to success. These six practical steps can help you identify cost optimisation and resource redirection in your organisation.
Step 1: Assessing your cloud environment for costs
A successful cost optimisation journey starts with understanding your current cloud environment. The key is implementing a comprehensive CFM assessment that examines an organisation's cloud maturity, identifies cost drivers and uncovers potential areas of improvement.
To identify actionable cost trend information within the larger set of cost data, you need more than a monthly invoice. You need a dashboard that isolates costs into meaningful subcategories, so you can establish baseline costs as well as track variations and trends. Your dashboard provides visibility into month-to-month, day-to-day and even hour-to-hour trends.
By breaking out costs in a dashboard, you gain insight into the cost for specific components of your architecture, which you can then weigh against the value or budget for that architecture. Further, a dashboard gives you better visibility into cost changes, so that you can proactively address new or changing costs.
Step 2: Monitor cost trends
Through working with hundreds of organizations around the world to optimise their cloud spend, we've identified a few common trends. They are indicators of certain patterns in cloud architecture that can lead to cost concerns and include the following:
• The shark’s fin: This trend is the most common when building out new services. Optimisation is enacted initially. However, costs eventually spike. Then optimisation is assessed again to reign costs back in. This pattern continues in an ever-devolving cycle.
• The climb: This occurs during periods of architectural growth. Costs are expected to increase as use expands. But as both continue to grow, the costs go unchecked, masking any waste or mis-provisioned resources.
• The science experiment: When new development projects are implemented and costs are unknown, the result is a sudden increase, then a levelling off.
• The delayed mistake: This occurs when something new is implemented, but its effectiveness is not immediately obvious. In this case, there may be some time before a reaction can occur.
An awareness of these patterns when monitoring an architecture can save significant time in costs optimisation by addressing potential issues before they occur.
Step 3: Showback sand chargebacks
For a more complex and heterogeneous environment (e.g. multiple unique products or applications), organisations may need more data points to effectively track costs and the ability to isolate costs on a per-application or product basis.
A good allocation strategy provides more meaningful information on the cost of products, which can be used to determine the profitability or value of the products. Allocation strategies are also commonly used to isolate R&D activity. Whichever cost allocation strategies an organization adopts will require some foresight and would ideally be articulated in a clear and consistent organisation-wide policy.
Step 4: Rightsizing to match costs with demand
One of the most common cost management activities relevant to almost all cloud customers is aligning the number and size of provisioned resources to the use needs. In traditional data centre environments, organisations generally account for peak capacity. But in the cloud, it’s better to provision for minimum capacity, with the ability to scale-up resources to meet fluctuations in demand.
Whether you’re undergoing migration or developing a new application, it can be difficult to know what’s crucial for your infrastructure to run efficiently. You may find that you’re overspending on unnecessary resources.
Step 5: Employing financial instruments
Savings plans and reserved instances (RI) are integral to reigning costs in your cloud environment. Discounts may be available on committed use and are an ideal layer to place on top of rightsizing or autoscaling efforts, or to implement on sustained always-on workloads. Financial instruments usually represent an opportunity for cost optimisation because they don’t require any technical implementation.
Step 6: Understanding how the four pillars of CFM can help you
Sound CFM practices can foster a culture focused on saving within your organisation, empowering you to invest in more useful technology consulting and services to drive innovation in your business.
As a trusted Amazon Web Services (AWS) partner for conducting CFM assessment, Rackspace Technology offers a comprehensive assessment to evaluate your company's CFM maturity across these four vectors:
1. Cost optimisation
2. Planning and forecasting
3. Cloud financial operations
4. Measurement and accountability
To help identify your opportunities for cost optimisation and resource redirection insights, book your complimentary three-hour workshop*. It includes an analysis and recommendations report and a 30-minute presentation of the findings with benchmark comparative data on your CFM maturity.
*This offer is for APJ-based customers only.
Rackspace Technology to Announce First Quarter 2024 Earnings May 9, 2024
SAN ANTONIO,-- Rackspace Technology (NASDAQ:RXT) ® (NASDAQ: RXT)” the leading end-to-end, hybrid multicloud and AI technology solutions company, today announced that it will release its first quarter 2024 financial results after the market closes on Thursday, May 9, 2024. Amar Maletira, Chief Executive Officer, and Mark Marino, Chief Financial Officer, will host a conference call on the day of the release (May 9, 2024) at 5:00 PM ET to discuss the Company's financial results.
Interested parties may access the conference call as follows:
To listen to the live webcast or access the replay following the webcast, please visit our IR website at the following link: https://ir.rackspace.com/news-and-events/events-and-presentations.
To obtain a dial-in number, please pre-register at the following link: https://register.vevent.com/register/BI948ffa0430e74a9d85c144912294218d. Registrants will receive dial-in information and a PIN allowing them to access the live call.
About Rackspace TechnologyRackspace Technology the leading end-to-end, hybrid multicloud and AI technology solutions company. We can design, build, and operate our customers' cloud environments across all major technology platforms, irrespective of technology stack or deployment model. We partner with our customers at every stage of their cloud journey, enabling them to modernize applications, build new products and adopt innovative technologies.
Interested parties may access the conference call as follows:
To listen to the live webcast or access the replay following the webcast, please visit our IR website at the following link: https://ir.rackspace.com/news-and-events/events-and-presentations.
To obtain a dial-in number, please pre-register at the following link: https://register.vevent.com/register/BI948ffa0430e74a9d85c144912294218d. Registrants will receive dial-in information and a PIN allowing them to access the live call.
About Rackspace TechnologyRackspace Technology the leading end-to-end, hybrid multicloud and AI technology solutions company. We can design, build, and operate our customers' cloud environments across all major technology platforms, irrespective of technology stack or deployment model. We partner with our customers at every stage of their cloud journey, enabling them to modernize applications, build new products and adopt innovative technologies.
Rackspace Technology and Mendix Partnership Demonstrates Commitment to Leveraging Innovative Technologies to Transform Businesses and New Growth Opportunities for Customers
SAN ANTONIO, -- Rackspace Technology® (NASDAQ: RXT), a leading end-to-end hybrid, multicloud, and AI technology services company, today announced a strategic partnership with Mendix, a Siemens business and global leader in modern enterprise application development. Under the agreement, Rackspace will add Mendix’s market-leading low-code platform to its Rapid Application Development (RAD) offering. Through this partnership, Rackspace Technology will deploy managed service support for both private and public cloud for Mendix’s customers with access to all major cloud providers, private cloud infrastructure, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) with Foundry for AI by Rackspace (FAIR™) for application development.
Rackspace Technology’s customers will benefit from the combination of Mendix's comprehensive digital transformation platform and Mendix will have access to Rackspace Technology’s small and midsize business (SMB) customers, commercial and enterprise markets expertise that spans across 120 countries worldwide and supports multinational customers with significant presence in the public sector and Rackspace’s FedRAMP compliance across multiple frameworks.
“As organizations of all sizes continue to drive their cloud transformation and AI initiatives and look for more integrated solutions, this partnership offers a powerful set of tools to accelerate innovation. "Our push into AI with FAIR creates a natural pull-through for app development," said Ben Blanquera, VP of Technology and Sustainability at Rackspace. "In addition, this offering reinforces our commitment to helping businesses gain greater speed to market and uncover new growth opportunities. We are excited to work with existing Mendix’s customers, as well as the thousands of small and mid-sized businesses seeking a low code app development and multicloud solution.”
"Together, Mendix and Rackspace are helping enterprises transform themselves by streamlining the development of robust web and mobile applications and offering built-in multi-cloud support,” said Anne Antor, Americas Channel Leader at Mendix. “We are delighted to announce this important partnership as we pioneer the next generation of low-code application development."
Mendix’s app development platform provides flexibility, scalability, robustness, agility, security, and access to timely technical assistance and educational content. Working with Rackspace and Mendix, customers are able to capture new income streams, achieve competitive differentiation, and accelerate time to value.
Value Added Resellers (VARs) choose Mendix because the platform provides flexibility, agility, scalability, robustness, and security for their customer’s demands. VARs also get access to timely technical assistance and educational content. With Mendix, VARs can capture new income streams, achieve competitive differentiation, and accelerate time to value.
Rackspace Technology’s customers will benefit from the combination of Mendix's comprehensive digital transformation platform and Mendix will have access to Rackspace Technology’s small and midsize business (SMB) customers, commercial and enterprise markets expertise that spans across 120 countries worldwide and supports multinational customers with significant presence in the public sector and Rackspace’s FedRAMP compliance across multiple frameworks.
“As organizations of all sizes continue to drive their cloud transformation and AI initiatives and look for more integrated solutions, this partnership offers a powerful set of tools to accelerate innovation. "Our push into AI with FAIR creates a natural pull-through for app development," said Ben Blanquera, VP of Technology and Sustainability at Rackspace. "In addition, this offering reinforces our commitment to helping businesses gain greater speed to market and uncover new growth opportunities. We are excited to work with existing Mendix’s customers, as well as the thousands of small and mid-sized businesses seeking a low code app development and multicloud solution.”
"Together, Mendix and Rackspace are helping enterprises transform themselves by streamlining the development of robust web and mobile applications and offering built-in multi-cloud support,” said Anne Antor, Americas Channel Leader at Mendix. “We are delighted to announce this important partnership as we pioneer the next generation of low-code application development."
Mendix’s app development platform provides flexibility, scalability, robustness, agility, security, and access to timely technical assistance and educational content. Working with Rackspace and Mendix, customers are able to capture new income streams, achieve competitive differentiation, and accelerate time to value.
Value Added Resellers (VARs) choose Mendix because the platform provides flexibility, agility, scalability, robustness, and security for their customer’s demands. VARs also get access to timely technical assistance and educational content. With Mendix, VARs can capture new income streams, achieve competitive differentiation, and accelerate time to value.
Foundry for Generative AI by Rackspace (FAIR) for Google Cloud is dedicated to accelerating the secure, responsible, and sustainable adoption of generative AI solutions in enterprises across all industries.
“This partnership is a force multiplier to accelerate the pragmatic and secure use-case-based adoption of generative AI in businesses across all industries,” said Srini Koushik, Rackspace CTO and global lead for FAIR. “With FAIR, Rackspace and Google Cloud are building on our shared values of putting the customer first, commitment to sustainability and technology innovation to align our offerings, multicloud capabilities, and highly skilled cloud workforce with Google Cloud’s industry-leading AI capabilities to help our customers harness the true power of generative AI in a secure, responsible and human-friendly manner.”
“Generative AI has the potential to improve how businesses fundamentally operate in every industry,” said Jim Anderson, VP NA Partners Ecosystem & Channels at Google Cloud. “Rackspace’s launch of FAIR for Google Cloud will provide businesses with the expertise needed to deploy new AI capabilities safely, responsibly, and quickly.”
The Foundry for Generative AI by Rackspace (FAIR)
FAIR for Google Cloud is a groundbreaking global practice dedicated to advancing business transformation, improving customer experience, increasing the quality of service, and accelerating value creation through the secure and pragmatic use of AI technologies using Google Cloud. FAIR has identified over 100 use cases across multiple industries and is working on several first-of-a-kind implementations for our customers across the globe. FAIR provides three unique services to help lean into the transformative power of generative AI:
• FAIR Ideate: An interactive and collaborative ideation workshop that helps organisations uncover actionable use cases for generative AI with defined business impacts. AI readiness diagnostics provide critical considerations for successful AI adoption.
• FAIR Incubate: An agile and iterative program that co-creates an enterprise’s first generative AI solution. It establishes the technology stack and assesses the viability of AI, ensuring seamless integration into organisational processes.
• FAIR Industrialize: A systematic effort to transform the AI solution into a product, implementing governance, defining metrics, and optimising the AI model and Distributed Cloud Infrastructure for continuous improvement.
As a long-standing Google Cloud customer, Rackspace has used FAIR to implement Rackspace Intelligent Co-pilot for the Enterprise (Rackspace ICE™). Rackspace ICE is an AI Duet that boosts the productivity and effectiveness of go-to-market teams. It harnesses the power of AI to automate routine tasks, identify warm leads, surface relevant data and content, and provide real-time contextualised analytics for hyper-personalised customer interactions.
Rackspace is also using FAIR to develop RITA (Rackspace’s Intelligent Technology Assistant). RITA is an interactive chatbot that uses the latest language models to answer text IT service requests, enhance self-service capabilities for inquiries, request new hardware or software, reset forgotten passwords, and answer questions on IT and security policies. In addition, the solution links the response to the specific sections of the source documents for resolution.
“When we deploy RITA, we expect an 80% decrease in tickets, making Rackers more productive while allowing us to deploy talent to other areas of IT,” said Scott Sanders, CIO for Rackspace Technology. “What’s even better is that with Google’s latest innovations, we can inject language translation and easily introduce other interaction modalities into our solutions.”