Accelerate Your Cloud Journey with Rackspace Elastic Engineering Dedicated Pods

What could your organization accomplish with a dedicated, flexible team of engineers who have experience in all aspects of cloud computing? The answer is straightforward: Anything you need to accomplish.

That is the objective of one of the most unique solutions that Rackspace Technology® offers organizations — Rackspace Elastic Engineering. With this service, organizations get a flexible cloud management operating model and on-demand access to a dedicated pod of engineers who work with in-house teams to achieve the organization’s business goals.

The dedicated engineering pod model gives organizations an engineering team that works consistently with them and is solely focused on their IT needs. Rather than Rackspace merely providing support, pod engineers become a consultative partner and an extension of the in-house team, helping build, operate and improve their cloud environments.

According to Jonathan Loeffler, Senior Manager of Cloud Practice Engineering at Rackspace, “The leading benefit of Rackspace Elastic Engineering is that the engineers become a dependable resource that fits into the organization’s culture, understands its business needs and works as dedicated members of its team.”

Loeffler sat down to answer several fundamental questions about Rackspace Elastic Engineering, including its key features and benefits, range of services and business approach.

Q: How is Rackspace Elastic Engineering different from staff augmentation services?

Loeffler: Staff augmentation has its purpose and place, but Rackspace Elastic Engineering operates with its own unique delivery framework. It governs tasks and deliverables to completion, helping ensure that our customers’ business objectives and outcomes are met with a high degree of accuracy and accountability.

Our engineering talent and delivery methodology are the secret sauce of the engagement. The engineers and architects have a technical aptitude that’s cranked to 11 to support organizations’ evolving technology demands. And they adapt to each customer’s unique needs, grow as each customer’s cloud maturity evolves, and are always one step ahead of market and industry trends.

Our cloud engineers and architects are not just outsourced talent. They are Rackspace employees. They bring our core values and delivery methodology to every organization we work with.

Q. What are the key features of a Rackspace Elastic Engineering dedicated pod?

Loeffler: Several features make this solution unique in the industry and a compelling option for organizations around the world — from its do-with approach to its accelerators.

• Our do-with engagement approach means that pod engineers work in an agile, sprint-based model alongside our customers’ teams. While this may sound cliché, it’s key to being able to deliver high-performance results with a small team.
• Having a dedicated pod means that regardless of the tier of monthly hours a customer chooses, they’ll always work with the same engineering pod, a team that knows them, their environment and their business.
• Our flexible tiered pricing lets customers purchase fractional access to their engineering pods through a straightforward hours-based tier, which can be used across multiple departments. Organizations can scale tiers up and down monthly as their business needs change.
• We create accelerators, like platform tools and frameworks, that can be used across teams, so our customers can benefit from the collective knowledge of the pod members.

Q. What experts make up each engineering pod?

Loeffler: Each engineering pod includes:

• An engagement manager who is the customer’s primary point of contact and is responsible for the engagement’s overall delivery.
• A lead cloud architect who owns the successful technical delivery of solutions in flight that meet the customer’s technical objectives.
• Senior cloud engineers who contribute focused technical expertise in one or more domains and who provide hands-on work, writing code across cloud infrastructures.
• A skills mix that can be highly customized based on business requirements and can adapt as business needs evolve.
• Specialists from Rackspace services beyond DevOps can join the dedicated pods on an as-needed basis.

Q. What services does Rackspace Elastic Engineering deliver to customers?

Loeffler: Rackspace Elastic Engineering can deliver any service an organization needs along its path to cloud maturity. Our dedicated engineering pods can be configured to meet organizations wherever they are on that journey — from the early days of cloud migration to building highly complex cloud-native architectures. The types of services provided include infrastructure builds, DevOps and automation, performance management, database management, security management, disaster recovery planning, planned maintenance and cost optimization.

Q. How does Rackspace Elastic Engineering’s continuous development and delivery framework work?

Loeffler: The delivery framework is an agile process that closely follows the principles of scrum. This approach provides stakeholders with ongoing visibility, which allows course corrections throughout the project. The basic steps include:

1. Rackspace begins the engagement with a long-range planning session, where the project is divided into achievable work items that can be delivered and demonstrated in weekly iterations (sprints).
2. Before each iteration, Rackspace engineers collaborate with our customer to document and review a backlog of user stories.
3. The sprint begins on the day of the planning meeting and ends the day before the next planning meeting. During the sprint, Rackspace engineers conduct all analysis, design, engineering, deployment and testing activities.
4. The team meets each day for a standup meeting, where each member discusses their previous day’s accomplishments, their plan for the day and any issues that are blocking progress.
5. The end of each sprint is celebrated with a demonstration to key stakeholders of what was accomplished, the expected business outcomes and results.

Q. How expensive is the service?

Loeffler: Engineering talent is expensive, but with dedicated pods, we can staff engagements at a lower cost than direct-to-market fees. As a result, Rackspace Technology has a relatively low cost and barrier to entry.

Dedicated engineering pods can be customized on a per-customer basis with an arrangement that works for most budgets and business needs. A highly skilled, “two-pizza” team with a focus on automation helps achieve our customers’ business outcomes with low overhead in a highly agile manner.

Q. What advice would you give to organizations considering Rackspace Elastic Engineering?

Loeffler: In today’s rapidly evolving technology environment, enterprises will value the flexibility and agility that come with Rackspace Elastic Engineering. The time has never been better for organizations to consider deploying their own dedicated engineering pod to help them achieve their business outcomes in a customer-centric, agile way, in the face of global economic headwinds and industry challenges.

Ready to talk to a Rackspace Elastic Engineering specialist about how a dedicated engineering pod could help accelerate your organization’s technology goals? Contact us!