Rackspace Hosting, Akamai join forces to give customers faster online computing, backed by Fanatical Support

Rackspace Hosting, the world's leading specialist in the hosting and cloud computing industry, and Akamai Technologies Inc, the leading provider of cloud optimisation services, announced today a strategic relationship that will enable Rackspace to offer Akamai's Web acceleration and cloud optimisation services as part of its dedicated and cloud hosting portfolio.

Responding to the needs of its customers, Rackspace will work to integrate key features from Akamai such as CNAMEs, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), and CDN delivery for Cloud Files, a Rackspace service that provides highly scalable online storage for files and media.

Additionally, Rackspace will resell a range of essential Akamai site and application acceleration services to its customers. The goal is to create a one-stop shop for hosting, cloud, and acceleration services for Web content and applications.

“The next decade presents new opportunities for two industry leaders, Rackspace and Akamai, to better help customers succeed with their cloud strategies, especially around feature-rich content, SaaS applications, and dynamic Web sites,” said Lew Moorman, president, cloud and chief strategy officer for Rackspace. “Having independently served hundreds of Akamai's customers, we are excited to streamline the customer experience on dedicated and cloud platforms with the leading cloud optimisation services provider, all backed by our trademark Fanatical Support.”

Just as Rackspace is committed to giving its customers the industry's best service, Akamai has achieved the same level of user satisfaction with its globally-distributed network, which helps businesses optimise the cloud. Integrating Akamai's services into the Rackspace product portfolio addresses four common challenges faced by companies moving their businesses into the cloud or into hosted environments: latency, availability, scalability and security.

Akamai services are designed to reduce latency and provide for high availability in the cloud by leveraging more than 77 000 servers located in 71 countries. Providing instant scalability and robust security, Akamai helps businesses lower their IT costs, boost sales, and improve user adoption and productivity for hosted business applications and Web sites.

“This is a strategic relationship for Akamai and Rackspace aimed at helping our enterprise customers realise the full potential of cloud services from the data centre to the end-user,” said Willie Tejada, vice-president, application and site acceleration for Akamai. “By combining two best-of-class solutions for application hosting and cloud acceleration, Rackspace customers can gain improved performance, security and reliability for their Web-based applications.”

Rackspace will include Akamai solutions, either as an add-on or as an embedded suite of services, as part of Rackspace's full range of offerings across dedicated, cloud, and hybrid hosting. The initiative will begin with Akamai's content delivery services being integrated with Cloud Files, a Rackspace service that provides highly scalable online storage for files and media.

Additional current plans include providing Fanatical Support on a range of Akamai services to be sold in conjunction with Rackspace dedicated and cloud hosting services.