OREANDA-NEWS. Rackspace® (NYSE: RAX) today announced the release of Managed Application Services for Microsoft® Azure®. This new offering introduces Rackspace's premium Fanatical Support® to customers operating the Sitecore Experience Platform on Azure. Managed Application Services for Microsoft Azure also supports a full range of other digital applications, including Magento®, SAP® Hybris®, Oracle® Commerce, Adobe® Experience Manager, and custom Java® and .Net applications running on Azure. Adding premium, 24x7x365 application expertise and operations support on top of the Azure platform helps Rackspace ensure customers' ecommerce and web sites deliver optimal performance and reliability.

Managing digital and other mission-critical applications can be extremely complex and time intensive. Many businesses lack the internal resources and expertise needed to effectively architect the right solution for maximum performance, and to monitor and troubleshoot issues across the network, infrastructure and application layers. The new Managed Application Services offering will provide customers with 24x7 access to application and Microsoft Azure experts, which will help companies enhance their app's performance. These new services allow customers to leverage the benefits of Azure, while receiving the results-obsessed Fanatical Support that they are used to across their Rackspace, Azure and hybrid cloud environments.

"Delivering Managed Application Services to a growing number of businesses running digital applications on top of Microsoft Azure allows us to address a significant need in the market," said Kyle Metcalf, general manager for Rackspace Digital. "Managing the full range of digital applications requires deep expertise. By bringing our Fanatical Support up the stack to the application layer, we're able to provide unprecedented value to digital customers on Azure. These customers can now sleep comfortably each night knowing that Rackspace is watching their sites and helping ensure their valuable applications are always operating optimally."

The Managed Application Services for Microsoft Azure offering features:

  • 100 Percent Production Platform Uptime Guarantee -- Gives customers the peace of mind to know that their mission-critical applications will always be up and running when operating on a well-architected compute environment.
  • 24x7 Expertise -- Customers do not have to hire Azure and application experts, as these valuable resources are on staff 24x7 at Rackspace, freeing up the customer's IT team to focus on more strategic initiatives.
  • Advanced Monitoring -- Customers have access to leading Application Performance Management (APM) tools to monitor the health of their environment and the performance of their application.

"We are excited about the value that the Managed Application Services offering will bring to customers running Sitecore® on Microsoft Azure," said Darren Guarnaccia, EVP, Customer Experience, Sitecore. "As a Platinum Technology Sitecore partner, Rackspace has the expertise customers demand and is ideally suited to bring an enhanced level of application support to our customers, helping them deliver on the promise of context marketing."

About Rackspace

Rackspace (NYSE: RAX), the #1 managed cloud company, helps businesses tap the power of cloud computing without the complexity and cost of managing it on their own. Rackspace engineers deliver specialized expertise, easy-to-use tools, and Fanatical Support® for leading technologies developed by AWS, Google, Microsoft, OpenStack, VMware and others. The company serves customers in 120 countries, including more than half of the FORTUNE 100.