San Antonio-based cloud services company Rackspace has launched a new managed service for customers wanting to migrate to/start using AWS’s range of cloud database tools: Amazon Aurora, Amazon Redshift, AWS Glue and Amazon Athena.
Rackspace described the offering as reducing operational cost and time to market.
It has been designed to help “architect, integrate, and optimise” existing environments with AWS’ relational database management system, data warehouse, and serverless services, the company said.
Data warehouses are notoriously painful to maintain and access: one survey last summer found 62 percent of respondents citing the “data” stack as too complex and are unsatisfied with their current solutions.
Cloud-based data warehouses typically provide the flexibility to grow storage independently of compute resources. This allows for the ingestion of large volumes of data without the associated compute costs. Switching to a cloud-based data warehouse also enables organizations to scale in a matter of minutes, or even seconds, based on fluctuations in data growth; one of the key drivers of cloud migrations.
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“Helping our customers manage their data and analyse it in a way that helps them innovate and drive their business forward is a priority for us,” said Anurag Gupta, vice president, Analytics, Aurora, and RDS, Amazon Web Services, Inc.
He added: “We’re excited to be working together with Rackspace to deliver greater data management capabilities and a stronger overall experience for our customers.”
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The managed AWS Database Service launch comes after Rackspace effectively stopped competing as a cloud provider, focussing instead on managed services since leaving public markets in 2016, following a $4.3 billion deal with private equity house Apollo.
Rackspace was named an “Amazon Web Services (AWS) Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) Partner” in June 2018, winning accreditation from the dominant public cloud provider for its competency and experience.
Rackspace boasts over 1,000 AWS technical certicates and says its support starts from as little as $400 per month. It says it is taking a “modular approach” to the managed service, with support in several important areas, including:
Full Lifecycle Management – Support for migration, implementation, administration, and optimisation of data to allow customers to focus more time and resources on their business, while leveraging these cloud-native data technologies.
Enhanced Data Analytic Capabilities – Support for leading AWS data and business intelligence management services, while also providing ongoing management for flexible, scalable cloud analytics already on AWS.
Modular Pricing – A modular approach to pricing that allows customers to consume the appropriate services “at any point in their cloud journey and create customised solutions that enhance their use of AWS’ suite of data services.”
Rackspace competes in a competitive market, jostling for market share with Deloitte and CapGemini, NTT Data, Wipro, DXC and others.