The competition is toughening for Amazon, GoGrid, IBM and other cloud service providers: Global data center services provider Equinix, which operates in 38 countries, revealed Nov. 7 that it has been selected as a data center partner for customers building and/or deploying private and hybrid clouds using the new Rackspace private cloud platform.
Rackspace Cloud: Private Edition (the official name for the service), which launched Nov. 7, provides enterprise IT shops with production cloud solutions based on the open source OpenStack. It delivers everything through published reference architectures, certified deployment partners, and cloud management services from Rackspace.
With Redwood City, Calif.-based Equinix now in the picture, Rackspace has the international backbone to make this all work. Users now have the option to deploy the Rackspace private cloud in International BusinessExchange (IBX) data centers located around the world. Equinix’s hosting brings global reach, scalability, security, and high availability needed for cloud-based enterprise production apps.
This news also says a great deal about the traction OpenStack is getting in the enterprise IT marketplace. The word from people in the field is that it works and works well — and is a lot less expensive to deploy than proprietary platforms.
