For years, Rackspace was known as one of the foremost Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud companies. Now, they’re out of the pure-play IaaS business. What happened?
It is more than a little surprising. I mean, not only was Rackspace one of the first IaaS cloud companies, but it, along with NASA, also helped create OpenStack, the hottest open-source cloud project around. Indeed, if you do a Google search on Rackspace, you’ll find it’s still listed as the “Dedicated IaaS Leader.”
In a Network World interview, Rackspace CTO John Engates said Rackspace didn’t want to keep chasing Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Drive down the rabbit hole of more and cheaper storage. “We realized in some regards that we needed to play our own game instead of chasing a competitor. We want to make it clear that we’re a managed cloud company and not a copy-cat of Amazon.