Rackspace Now Offers ‘Fanatical Support’ For Azure

Managed public cloud provider Rackspace announced that it is bringing it’s ‘Fanatical Support‘ to Microsoft Azure public cloud environments monday morning, marking the first time the firm has supported a public cloud outside of its own databases.

Public cloud, for the uninitiated, is a cloud infrastructure that is hosted by cloud services provider and is made available to the public via the internet (as defined by our very own Cloud Glossary).

Rackspace has offered its own OpenStack based managed public cloud since 2012, but this deal marks the first time that the San Antonio, Texas based firm has offered support for a public cloud other than it’s own.

Rackspace support services for Azure start with a $1,500 fee, and are priced in tiers based on the level of managed support required. Currently, Rackspace only supports US-based Azure customers, but the company will expand support to firms in Azure regions worldwide throughout late 2015 and early 2016.

A Long Time Coming

For those in the know, this deal should come as no surprise— Rackspace has a long history of supporting Microsoft products, and has supported private Azure clouds since November of 2014.

Rackspace CEO Taylor Rhodes had previously hinted about deals such as this one when he said that the company would expand its trademarked “fanatical support” to outside cloud companies in May, just after Rackspace began offering managed services for Microsoft Office 365—the first time Rackspace had offered support for an app based outside of their own data centers. “Supporting other clouds makes sense and is consistent with our culture,” said Rhodes at a May Rackspace earnings call.