Published on the 18/04/2013 | Written by Newsdesk
Open cloud computing pioneer Rackspace will this quarter allow local cloud clients to cut over to its Sydney data centre – and also offer them the chance to build their own cloud…
Rackspace Hosting this week announced plans to provide third parties with the smarts, technology and services to allow them to build and operate their own cloud for either private use – or to resell. It also signalled loud and clear that the Sydney Rackspace data centre would likely be its only Australian facility, and that those enterprises based outside of NSW which needed extremely low latency should consider using the newly released tools to build their own clouds in other states and territories.
The company announced it was setting up a Sydney data centre in Australia last August. Alan Perkins, director of technology and products for Rackspace in Asia Pacific said that the data centre had been open for four months and that demand for hosting services had been growing quickly with “hundreds” of organisations signed up.
From this financial quarter Australian users of Rackspace cloud services – which have previously been provided out of its overseas data centres – will be able to cut over to the Sydney data centre.
Speaking from the OpenStack conference currently underway in the US Perkins said that the release of the Rackspace tools and services would “commoditise” cloud creation and could spawn a more robust international ecosystem of open clouds which would guard against vendor lock-in and ensure more choice for users. The initiative isn’t entirely selfless though, as Perkins noted, “it enables us to grow at a faster rate than we could (otherwise).”
While he declined to say whether any local enterprises had signalled an interest in building an OpenStack cloud in Australia using Rackspace tools and services he said that the company had previously been approached to follow this course of action by organisations in the region. He said in those countries where data sovereignty was a particular issue – Thailand for example – the opportunity to use Rackspace tools and services could allow faster deployment of local clouds.
In a media release issued by Rackspace, Gary Chen, IDC research manager noted that, “a global federated service provider cloud network that allows creation of hybrid clouds with resources from multiple public providers could be a compelling solution for customers.”
