Rackspace has announced Managed Private Cloud Everywhere, a ready-to-roll private cloud based on OpenStack’s Liberty release. The company said the package will make it possible to launch a fully-managed cloud anywhere in the world, remotely.

The aim is to place cloud into the reach of those who see a need for the move but lack the technical resources and cannot justify the cost of engaging specialist contractors. The company said that using Managed Private Cloud Everywhere reduces the cost, risk and operational burden of taking a do-it-yourself approach to private cloud adoption.

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Frank Weyns, Rackspace international director for OpenStack said: “Many companies are looking at cloud, even non-IT companies, and for 90 percent of them it is not core to their business to manage cloud environments. We are offering an OpenStack solution which can be dropped on a local hosting service to satisfy most, if not all, of their needs.”

The complexity and cost of hiring talent to deploy and operate a private cloud was a trigger for the development of Managed Private Cloud Everywhere. The package comprises a complete open source, software-defined infrastructure (SDI), from server to network and storage.

Weyns admitted that the pre-defined infrastructure would not fit everyone perfectly but added that it would satisfy 95 percent of most companies’ needs. “It’s a bit like buying a car,” he explained, “when the salesman says you can have the blue car with all the fittings you have specified if you wait six months – or you can drive the same model away today if you settle for black. Most people would accept the second deal rather than wait.”

Under this offer, a Rackspace-designed, purpose-built OpenStack private cloud is deployed in any data center specified by the customer in any country. This gives them a fully-tested, integrated, modular rack of hardware, software, and services.

Rackspace personnel manage the end-to-end deployment, the monitoring and the running of the cloud and help to familiarise the customer with their OpenStack private cloud environment through the company’s so-called Fanatical Support team. This includes service level agreements backed by a 99.99 percent OpenStack API uptime guarantee.

The bottom line for Rackspace is that Managed Private Cloud Everywhere demystifies the technicalities of private cloud deployment. In Weyns words: “If OpenStack is a diamond, we’ve made it more shiny.”