Rackspace Leaves The IaaS Market

In May of this year, Rackspace leaders visited Morgan Stanley, to discuss the company's development strategy. It seems that the prospects for the development IaaS market were quite disappointing for Rackspace's, and now, three months later, the company announced its decision. According to the Forbes article: "Rackspace's reports that the company minimizes its presence in the market as "pure provider IaaS-making. Instead, Rackspace will focus on providing comprehensive services that will include software and integration solutions".

Rackspace Leaves The IaaS Market

The chart below demonstrates why Rackspace leaves the market. To compete with Amazon, Microsoft or Google in terms of investment in infrastructure (namely, that, in fact, is the object of the lease in the IaaS model) - data centers, communications equipment, lines and so on - will not suffice any money.

Many have already approved the move as Rackspace's, really, it makes more sense to concentrate on "the fantastic quality of service", which made the company's name, than to try to compete with the giants of IaaS. But if I was a client who thinks several moves ahead, he would have thought about the separation of vendor services, which would be engaged in systems integration and administration of IaaS services. Ideally, the administration service provider would not be tied to any cloud service, and even better would be to provide services in the form of additional software "layers" - add-ons that might run on top of one or several different cloud solutions. Thus, the risk of «vendor lock-in» would be minimal for both IaaS-provider, and the provider of integration services.

Cumulative Capital Investment

Rackspace - is not the first company that has been under pressure to leave the market by the "super giants". Last year, about the same time, the IaaS market left-Dell, focusing on the role of "cloud broker". If Rackspace is going to be such a provider, the most reasonable it would be to get rid of most of the data centers and infrastructure to become fully independent. In any case, the Dell did just that, and I think it was the right choice.

So who is "lodges" of its customers? Those who will be most compatible with Rackspace Solutions and the lowest prices, and of sufficiently flexible strategy. In the near future, many will have to rethink the design of its "cloud-castle".

In view of the above considerations, here are three reasons why Rackspace customers should think about migrating to AWS.

1 - At AWS wide infrastructure partners

With AWS works very many companies of all sizes and specializations, it is easy to find the right solution. And the abundance of partners reduces the risk of «vendor lock-in».

2 - Migration to and from AWS Services

Just a typical operation, so that Amazon Amazon partners and myself have built up a set of solutions to help you pass this stage as painlessly as possible

AWS pricing model enormously complex, but Amazon credit, completely transparent, and often used as a yardstick for other services. The process of moving to Amazon services and back has performed many times in different companies to find a consultant to facilitate the process for you, it is not likely to make much of a problem.

3 - Most likely, Amazon will continue to be competitive in price.

It is simply no other choice. Someone will always do better offers (most likely it will be Google) and all other market participants will react also cutting prices. But Amazon has a special position as a pioneer - as a result, many market participants say directly ( the Azure , Joyent ), that they would equalize its prices with Amazon offering. Price competition between Amazon and Google will be the most rigid and the other is customized.

As a result,

The Best Cloud Solutions - Those that are not monolithic, but modular. Set of several providers who provide services to different levels of a single ecosystem, it is better because it allows you to select those companies, whose services are ideally suited to the task at hand. It is also wise to choose providers with a turnkey solution for the migration, as regular change providers spurring competition, from which, ultimately, the customer wins.