Rackspace Comes to Australia…And Brings Our OpenStack Solution Too!
This week, Rackspace opened our latest data center in Australia. You might think this marks our entry into the country, but we have actually been there for some time. Throughout our history we have had a large number of Australian companies serving their customers and markets from our other data centers, and in particular in our Hong Kong facility. In 2009, we setup a permanent team of Rackers in Australia to serve those customers led by the awesome Mark Randall (@racker_randall). With this investment, and the rollout of our cloud portfolio, the demand from the market for us to have a local data center rapidly grew; hence opening the new data center this week.
So what about Rackspace’s OpenStack offerings?
We support customers’ OpenStack private clouds in any data center they want, not just in Rackspace facilities. That means any facility, in any country, anywhere in the world. When we launched our offer in late 2011, we immediately saw strong interest from companies and institutions in the Australian market. Earlier this year we started helping Australian companies and institutions with OpenStack private clouds, and delivered our OpenStack training program to Aussies eager to get up to speed on the project. The market response isn’t surprising given the strong presence of OpenStack in the market already. Companies like Aptira and projects like NeCTAR have led the way. We are now excited to up our presence in the country as well.
Australians interested in having Rackspace support their OpenStack private cloud efforts now have several options:
- Download the Rackspace Private Cloud Software powered by OpenStack (code-named “Alamo”) and deploy a real and fully open cloud within an hour. It’s 100 percent open source; 100 percent based on community OpenStack; and 100 percent free. There is nothing to lock you into Rackspace or the software. Use it on your own, or call us and add support.
- Deploy your Rackspace Private Cloud in our new Sydney data center later this year, and have us manage your entire infrastructure – your hardware, network, etc., in addition to your OpenStack cloud. Learn what Fanatical Support is all about!
- Build a hybrid infrastructure – run it in your DC and our DC; and let Rackspace help you with all of it.
- Call us about private training on OpenStack, or look for public courses in Australia in the coming months.
I am thrilled to be making this commitment to the Australian market, and look forward to getting know the community there even better in the coming years.
Jim Curry
@jimcurry
About the Author
This is a post written and contributed by Jim Curry.
Jim Curry is the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Rackspace’s Private Cloud business, which supports and operates OpenStack-based private clouds in any data center worldwide. He joined Rackspace in 2006 to run corporate development efforts, which included new business incubation, venture investing activities, and mergers and acquisitions, including the acquisitions of Webmail.us, Slicehost, Jungle Disk and Cloudkick. Three years later, Jim led the founding of the OpenStack project on behalf of Rackspace and was responsible for developing the community until its transition to the OpenStack Foundation in 2012. He currently serves on the board of the foundation.
Jim has previously held executive positions with several technology startups, including Bowstreet and Tivoli, which have since been acquired by IBM. He holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Texas and an MBA from Harvard University. Jim and his wife Laurie have a four-year-old son and one-year-old twins, a boy and a girl.
Follow Jim on Twitter at @jimcurry and on his blog at: cloudpunch.blogspot.com
