Rackspace Hosting Acquires SharePoint911

Cloud computing specialist Rackspace Hosting announced its acquisition of SharePoint911, a provider of SharePoint consulting, training and “JumpStart” services within SharePoint. The unification of both companies provides capabilities to deliver SharePoint hosting solutions along with services to the enterprise market.

“For several years, Rackspace has focused on providing managed SharePoint infrastructure,” says John Engates, chief technology officer at Rackspace. “We are thrilled to have the world-class expertise of SharePoint911 on our team to give us greater application delivery service capabilities. SharePoint911 will add the talent and expertise to our teams to make SharePoint deployments easier for our customers while increasing their scalability and performance through better integration of the workload and infrastructure.”

Rackspace entered the managed SharePoint market in 2008 with a service offering that helped companies deal with the complexities of managing SharePoint environments. €œThe Fanatical Support provided by Rackspace allows BHWM to scale and reach just like a global enterprise at the right cost,€ said John Stuart, chief information officer at Beverly Hills Wealth Management. €œCombining SharePoint911€™s professional services and MVP staff is a valuable addition to the Rackspace proposition. I am excited to see two of BHWM€™s service providers find each other independently and expand their offering as a team.€

SharePoint911, powered by Microsoft MVPs, and Rackspace said the combination of talents would allow them to offer access to the expertise needed to create long-term SharePoint success€”both inside Rackspace€™s data centers or at customer locations. €œOur relationship with SharePoint911 dates back to our initial launch of SharePoint 3.0 in 2008,€ said Armand Brunelle, managing director at Castle Pines Capital, a Wells Fargo Company. €œThe SharePoint911 team has played an instrumental role in the development and deployment of our solutions. I believe that SharePoint911 represents the industry’s best talent as they have clearly been a valued partner to Castle Pines Capital.€

Melanie Posey, research vice president of hosting and managed network services at IT research firm IDC, said Rackspace€™s acquisition of SharePoint911, a company dedicated to end-user SharePoint adoption, is a key strategic development, given that one of the primary barriers to broader SharePoint usage in businesses is the lack of comprehensive design, development, training and user support services to drive innovative SharePoint implementations.

€œWe believe that Rackspace has uniquely positioned itself above its competitors by adding the thought leadership and expertise of SharePoint911,€ she said. €œGoing forward, Rackspace can help to further accelerate adoption of SharePoint, one of the fastest-growing applications in the business productivity segment.”