Managed cloud provider Rackspace has deepened its relationship with Amazon Web Services (AWS), now offering customer migration services.
Rackspace announced the enhanced channel partnership Monday, saying it will offer resources and expertise to help customers quickly and effectively migrate workloads to AWS.
"We are excited about the opportunity to work even more closely with AWS to enable companies to take full advantage of AWS services," Prashanth Chandrasekar (pictured above), vice president and general manager of Rackspace ‘Fanatical Support for AWS’ business, said in a statement. "As an AWS Managed Services Partner, Rackspace now offers customers a wide range of services, including migrations, architecture, and cloud automation professional services, in addition to ongoing managed services.”
Chandrasekar told ZDNet that Rackspace and Amazon will be “joined at the hip” when it comes to offering professional services. Amazon will appoint channel sales managers with the specific goal of sending Rackspace customers, while members of the AWS professional services team will actually share workspace with Rackspace at the company’s headquarters in San Antonio, he said.
Rackspace has also been building out its managed services for Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) as part of its strategy to offer managed services for all major cloud platforms, as well as certain cloud software platforms like Pivotal and OpenStack.
Just last week it announced beta testing for GCP managed services.
Partnership Details
The strategic relationship between AWS and Rackspace consists of three key components:
- Solution and migration advisory services: AWS-specific technical resources from Rackspace to plan the migration of customer apps and data, including assessment of current workloads; network topology; evaluating security, governance and compliance requirements; and designing system architecture
- Migration service delivery: Migration or provision of new applications on AWS by Rackspace engineers with help from on-site AWS Professional Services employees
- Advanced migration tooling: Automation software to enable customers to move various workloads to AWS, delivered as a “point and click” self-service interface within the Rackspace Control Panel
Rackspace and AWS have already started working together on migration projects for large brands, including the Six Flags theme park company.
In a statement, AWS Global Vice President of Channels and Alliances Terry Wise said Rackspace is a solid example of the type of partner it would recommend to customers who are moving to AWS.
"We have worked closely with Rackspace over the last several years and have been very impressed by their dedication to invest in the capabilities required to become one of the next-generation leaders in the AWS Managed Service Provider (MSP) Partner Program," Wise said.
Rackspace is an APN Premier Consulting Partner and an audited AWS Managed Service Partner.
The company serves customers in 150 countries, including more than half of the Fortune 100. Rackspace was named a leader in the 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud Infrastructure Managed Service Providers.
