It’s been only a handful of months since my fellow Forbes pundits Mike Kavis and Ben Kepes bemoaned cloud provider Rackspace’s troubles competing in the cutthroat public cloud marketplace. “Companies like Rackspace simply cannot compete,” opined Kavis in July 2014. Back in May, Kepes snarkily pointed out that “Rackspace has long been something of a bridesmaid,” as they unsuccessfully explored selling themselves to the highest bidder.
Yet, just as reports of Mark Twain’s death were exaggerated – or perhaps Monty Python’s “not dead yet”? – just so with San Antonio-based Rackspace Hosting, Inc. In the intervening months they have doubled down on their “fanatical support” strategy, shifting from a pure public cloud offering to managed cloud – a hybrid managed services and public/private cloud combination that differentiates them in the marketplace.
Managed services are wonderful to be sure – fanatical or not – but this strategy presents two significant challenges for Rackspace: will such handholding scale? And can they remain competitive with the likes of Amazon Web Services (AWS) from Amazon.com, Microsoft Azure, and others, who take turns driving down cloud pricing?
Read the entire article at http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2015/01/21/is-rackspace-the-nordstrom-of-cloud/.
Intellyx advises companies on their digital transformation initiatives and helps vendors communicate their agility stories. As of the time of writing, none of the organizations mentioned in this article are Intellyx customers. Rackspace covered Jason Bloomberg’s travel expenses for recent briefings at Rackspace headquarters, a standard industry practice.
