Rackspace, a VMware vCloud Air Network partner, announced from VMworld that it will support VMware Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) technologies including VMware NSX, Virtual SAN and vRealize Suite as a part of Rackspace Private Cloud powered by VMware. The offering, available in early access in October 2016, will accelerate enterprises' journey from their data centers to the hybrid cloud by transitioning on-premises workloads into a Rackspace-hosted SDDC environment.

Rackspace Private Cloud powered by VMware helps enable enterprises to run, migrate or extend their on-premises workloads into a dedicated single-tenant private cloud. With this new offering, Rackspace is extending support beyond VMware compute virtualization to include network virtualization, software-defined storage and cloud management platform support. This will give customers native access to VMware SDDC technologies with the enhanced security of a single-tenant private cloud, backed by Fanatical Support®.

"With more than a decade's worth of VMware operational expertise gained from operating thousands of virtual machines and hypervisors on a global scale, Rackspace is well positioned to extend support capabilities to VMware SDDC technologies," said Kaushik Balasubramanian, senior director of VMware Practice at Rackspace. "This is a logical step toward helping facilitate enterprise adoption of the hybrid cloud model, while accelerating businesses' journey toward the software-defined model of infrastructure. This also furthers our company mission to provide the best expertise and support for the world's leading clouds."

Rackspace support for VMware SDDC technologies allows customers to offload daily management while gaining the following benefits:

• Consistent Tooling and Code: Customers can migrate or extend to the VMware cloud without retooling environments or refactoring code by leveraging the same VMware technology that enterprises run in their data centers through Rackspace Private Cloud powered by VMware.
• On-Demand Access and Automation with Control: Customers receive self service access to VMware virtualization infrastructure, applications and custom services in the cloud. Enterprise central IT can further enable the DevOps model by automating the rapid delivery of resources internally, while maintaining control through policy-based governance and resource quotas, service levels, and security and compliance standards.
• Leverage Existing VMware Investments: Customers maintain value of existing investments made in training, VMware technology and familiar tools by accelerating adoption of software-defined infrastructure.
• Managed by Rackspace, Powered by VMware: Customers have access to 24x7x365 Fanatical Support more than 100 VMware Certified Professionals (VCPs) to help migrate, architect, secure and operate VMware clouds. Rackspace was named Service Provider Partner of the Year in the 2015 Americas VMware Partner Innovation Awards for achievements in the partner ecosystem.

"VMware software-defined data center technologies aim to meet enterprise demand for a solution that will ease adoption and automation of the cloud," said Geoff Waters, vice president, Global Service Providers at VMware. "We are excited to strengthen our alignment with Rackspace, a strategic vCloud Air Network partner, as the company extends its Fanatical Support to the SDDC stack to help bring this technology to more enterprises across the globe. We look forward to our continued collaboration."

According to Gartner, "For data center and infrastructure software providers, investing in the development of appropriate and disruptive SDDC technologies is essential. Customers and prospects are looking for benefits such as improved agility and reduced capital expenditure (capex), which SDDC technologies can deliver. SDDC also includes features and capabilities such as abstraction, instrumentation and policy management, which should be programmable, automated and orchestrated. The combination of these capabilities fosters innovations that optimize infrastructure and application use of underlying infrastructure."¹

Rackspace support for VMware SDDC will be available in early access in the U.S. in October 2016. To learn more about Rackspace Private Cloud powered by VMware, visit: http://go.rackspace.com/dedicated-servers-govmware-getsddc.