Rackspace is making a conscious effort to align its products to mission-critical enterprise deployments with this week's launch of its Cloud Connect offering and a new Critical Sites service level offering. While Cloud Connect is designed to offer customers a seamless integration option when using the Rackspace cloud in a dedicated hosting environment, the new Critical Sites service level is billed as a means to providing advanced monitoring for customers who rely on their websites and applications as mission critical components of their business.
The company says that Cloud Connect reinforces the strength of Rackspace’s portfolio of services by allowing customers to combine the scalability and cost benefits of the cloud with the security and configurability of dedicated managed hosting. Cloud Connect, which was released from beta at the beginning of November, is (according to Rackspace) the first service to seamlessly link cloud computing and traditional hosting, together with enhanced user control and security.
Also fresh out of the wrapper this week is the previously mentioned Rackspace Critical Sites service. An extension of Rackspace's jauntily named "Fanatical Support," this service drills into the application layer to deliver mission-critical support for clients’ most important websites and applications. Critical Sites customers receive access to a suite of performance management tools built to gain real-time visibility of the end user experience. The tools are designed to increase peak application performance and availability and ensure that the infrastructure functions at the optimal level to support the business.
"Critical Sites is specifically designed for clients who are dependent upon an online presence to drive customer acquisition/retention, revenue generation, customer service and the building of brand equity. This new service level offers the technical expertise and enterprise tools to help maximize infrastructure performance, proactively identify issues before they affect the end user experience and quickly address any problems that do occur," said John Engates, chief technology officer for Rackspace.
