The Future Is
Multi-Cloud
The Future Is Multi-Cloud
by Studio 61
Smart businesses are picking the right cloud for the right job and looking to centralized management to reduce complexity.
Smart businesses are picking the right cloud for the right job
and looking to centralized management to reduce complexity.

In order to remain as relevant and competitive as possible, businesses large and small are investing less in data center hardware and more in cloud services. Cloud resources scale easily, which appeals to IT admins, and they offer pay-as-you-go subscriptions that appeal to finance departments. Most important, they deploy more quickly and easily than on-premises hardware, and their growth -- already strong -- is predicted to skyrocket over the next few years.
According to Gartner, $111 billion of IT spending is shifting to the cloud in 2016, and that will hit $216 billion by 2020. This year saw Amazon Web Services revenue surge 58% and Microsoft’s Azure revenue soar 102% compared to 2015.
One of the trends driving this growth is multi-cloud deployments. TechRepublic quotes Forrester data that shows most companies use two or more public cloud services. Considering that private and hybrid cloud environments are also gaining in popularity, some analysts estimate that the average cloud customer uses six different clouds simultaneously.
The ease of deploying the right cloud for each app and task makes this approach increasingly popular. One company might develop mobile apps on Amazon while modernizing Windows apps using Azure, for example. Forrester analysts assert that multi-cloud is already the operating model for nearly half of companies using cloud.
The multi-cloud model is attractive because it helps companies avoid vendor lock-in, and each service integrates with automation scripts effectively, helping IT departments cut down on routine maintenance and deployment tasks. The challenge comes when companies try to manage the portfolio holistically and move workloads from one cloud to another. That’s why MarketsandMarkets predicts that the market for multi-cloud management tools will grow from $939 million in 2016 to $3.4 billion by 2021.
Companies want to leverage the best environments for each workload, but getting them all to work together can be difficult. What’s needed is a centralized model that lets organizations manage all their cloud environments together with their on-premises resources, keep all of those disparate elements secure, and embrace true application portability.
Keep scrolling through this feature to learn more about the unique opportunities and challenges of each cloud model and how Rackspace experts can help your company take its cloud strategy to the next level.

Securing Your Cloud at Every Stage
Public Cloud
The public cloud is popular because it’s easy to set up and scale, but companies often struggle with security and day-to-day management. In this video, Tech Republic's Bill Detwiler sits down with Rackspace experts to learn some best practices and key considerations for organizations that want to leverage the public cloud.

Public Cloud
The public cloud is popular because it’s easy to set up and scale, but companies often struggle with security and day-to-day management. In this video, Tech Republic's Bill Detwiler sits down with Rackspace experts to learn some best practices and key considerations for organizations that want to leverage the public cloud.


Private Cloud
Private clouds combine agility and control, but companies face challenges every day around configuration, hosting, and management. In this video, Tech Republic’s Bill Detwiler discusses these issues with experts from Rackspace and gets their insights and guidance for organizations starting—or evolving— their cloud journeys.
Private Cloud
Private clouds combine agility and control, but companies face challenges every day around configuration, hosting, and management. In this video, Tech Republic’s Bill Detwiler discusses these issues with experts from Rackspace and gets their insights and guidance for organizations starting—or evolving— their cloud journeys.

Hybrid Cloud
Hybrid cloud sounds like a perfect balance, but when it collides with reality, many companies end up with a complicated mixture of on-premises infrastructure and multiple cloud service relationships. Tech Republic’s Bill Detwiler sits down with experts from Rackspace to discover how organizations can leverage multi-cloud to support innovation, growth, and data security.

Hybrid Cloud
Hybrid cloud sounds like a perfect balance, but when it collides with reality, many companies end up with a complicated mixture of on-premises infrastructure and multiple cloud service relationships. Tech Republic’s Bill Detwiler sits down with experts from Rackspace to discover how organizations can leverage multi-cloud to support innovation, growth, and data security.


The Rackspace Difference
The Rackspace Difference
The Future Is Multi-Cloud
by Studio 61
Smart businesses are picking the right cloud for the right job
and looking to centralized management to reduce complexity.
Unparalleled expertise for Amazon, Azure, OpenStack, and VMware

Multi-cloud environments present a conundrum for companies: attempt to manage each component separately with trained specialists, or attempt to cobble together a centralized management scheme that reduces the granularity and feature set you can enjoy in each cloud.
Rackspace resolves this conundrum by employing vendor-certified specialists for every conceivable combination of cloud, off-site, and on-premises deployment. Whether public, private, or hybrid, Rackspace provides expert management for clouds.
- Rackspace provides more than 500 AWS-certified technicians.
- With hundreds of Microsoft Certified Professionals, Rackspace has the distinction of winning Microsoft Hosting Partner of the Year five years running.
- Rackspace is one of the inventors of OpenStack, the cloud orchestration and management framework that supports millions of workloads around the world.
- Rackspace has over a decade of experience supporting VMware environments on-premises and in the cloud.
- Rackspace provides single-tenant hosting, multi-tenant clouds, and colocation facilities running VMware, OpenStack, or both.
“Fanatical support” is the way Rackspace describes its results-driven customer support operations, where trained humans answer the phone 24/7/365 and work tirelessly to resolve issues and optimize service delivery.
With Rackspace managing your cloud environments, your organization will enjoy continuous optimization for cost and performance, seamless scale-up and scale-down for workloads as conditions fluctuate, and expert guidance for evolving your infrastructure and operations.
To learn more about Rackspace and its cloud expertise, please click here.