Rackspace Launches OpenCenter, Extending Cloud Operations Expertise to Enterprise Private Clouds

SAN ANTONIO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Rackspace® Hosting (NYSE: RAX), the open cloud company, today announced major new features in its free and open source Rackspace Private Cloud Software, powered by OpenStack and supported by its own Fanatical Support services. Key among the new functionality in this release is OpenCenter™, a single interface for deploying, configuring and operating clouds at scale in an enterprise data center.

“Rackspace Private Cloud’s powerful new OpenCenter platform is a user interface and orchestration tool built to deploy, operate and scale on-premise private clouds. This paves the way for Rackspace to bring its continuous integration and deployment expertise from the public cloud arena into private enterprise data centers”

New features of Rackspace Private Cloud Software include:

OpenCenter – Drawing from experience of operating The Rackspace Open Cloud, OpenCenter provides a centralized graphical user interface and API that simplifies and automates the operational activities associated with deploying, managing and maintaining Private Clouds.
High Availability – OpenCenter provides API or point-and-click deployment and management of high availability environments for the OpenStack controller nodes, improving up-time and reducing business risk.
Host Operating System Choice – Customers can now select from Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS for the host operating system in Rackspace Private Cloud deployments.

Rackspace Private Cloud Software is a combination of stable OpenStack® community 'trunk' code and proven Rackspace tools, packaging and configuration. Rackspace engineers have validated and certified products from over nine major industry partners for the private cloud software through its Technology Alliance Program. To download the free and open source Rackspace Private Cloud Software, visit www.rackspace.com/cloud/private.

As a proven open cloud operator, enterprise CIO’s are trusting Rackspace more than ever to help them on the journey to become service providers in their own data centers and accelerate their businesses with the efficiencies and value of cloud. Rackspace provides training, support or operations expertise on our Private Cloud powered by OpenStack to over 100 organizations, including 22 percent of the Fortune 100, since its launch in August 2012.

“Rackspace Private Cloud’s powerful new OpenCenter platform is a user interface and orchestration tool built to deploy, operate and scale on-premise private clouds. This paves the way for Rackspace to bring its continuous integration and deployment expertise from the public cloud arena into private enterprise data centers,” said Jim Curry, SVP and GM of Rackspace Private Cloud. “We are taking our own solid technology practices forward into private open cloud backed by Fanatical Support.”

“Through the operation of The Rackspace Open Cloud, built on OpenStack, we have already seen over 1590 code releases pushed live to open cloud without customer disruption. This joins 465 million API requests for Cloud Servers and a total of over 8400 unit tests have been run before each code release, so it has been a busy and dynamic period,” Curry said.

"The Rackspace Private Cloud Software gives us more choices on how to best manage our cloud environment and bring DevOps capabilities to our customers. We can either leverage Rackspace to support our environment when needed or have them completely operate it for us – on or off premise," said Juan Caceres, services director at JC Global Resources. "With full access to Rackspace's team of Fanatical Support experts and the company's deep experience building and running the largest OpenStack public cloud, we have confidence that we can deliver an enterprise class cloud infrastructure to our customers that will perform optimally. This allows us to focus more attention on our core business."

We continue to introduce new open cloud capabilities that will enable customers to have a true ‘cloud anywhere’ experience through continuous integration and delivery, workload portability and network interoperability. With continuous delivery and integration customers can take advantage of continuously developed, tested, integrated and deployed innovations and improvements to Rackspace Private Cloud. Workload portability will allow customers to move and scale workloads between Rackspace public and private clouds, while network interoperability enables customers to create a true hybrid cloud on a single network.

About Rackspace

Rackspace® Hosting (NYSE: RAX) is the open cloud company, delivering open technologies and powering more than 205,000 customers worldwide. Rackspace provides its renowned Fanatical Support® across a broad portfolio of IT products, including Public Cloud, Private Cloud, Hybrid Hosting and Dedicated Hosting. Rackspace has been recognized by Bloomberg BusinessWeek as a Top 100 Performing Technology Company, is featured on Fortune’s list of 100 Best Companies to Work For and is included on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. Rackspace was positioned in the Leaders Quadrant by Gartner Inc. in the “2011 Magic Quadrant for Managed Hosting.” Rackspace is headquartered in San Antonio with offices and data centers around the world. For more information, visit www.rackspace.com.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of Rackspace Hosting could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including any statements concerning expected development, performance or market acceptance associated with the Rackspace Private Cloud Software and the products and services offered on that platform; anticipated operational and financial benefits from the Rackspace Private Cloud Software and the products and services offered on that platform; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include including the possibility that expected benefits from the Rackspace Private Cloud Software and the products and services offered on that platform may not materialize because the products or services are not generally accepted in the marketplace, which could occur due to certain factors including (i) a failure to market the products or services cost effectively, differentiate the platform, products and services from competitive platforms, products and services or communicate differentiations effectively, (ii) the reliability, quality or compatibility associated with the platform, products or services, (iii) changes in technology which adversely affect the benefits of the product, (iv) slowdowns in the general economy or technology industry that impact consumer spending habits, (v) internal strategy decisions that impact the platform, products and services, and (vi) and other risks that are described in Rackspace Hosting’s Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2012, filed with the SEC on March 1, 2013. Except as required by law, Rackspace Hosting assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements publicly, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future.