Rackspace has added Fanatical Support for Microsoft Azure to its Microsoft product portfolio, and announced Rackspace engineers will provide application and infrastructure architecture.

The company will also offer hybrid cloud solutions that combine Rackspace Private Cloud powered by Microsoft's Cloud Platform and Azure.

“Our strategy at Rackspace has always been to provide the world's best expertise and service for industry-leading technologies - including a broad selection of Microsoft products,” says Taylor Rhodes, Rackspace CEO.

“We're pleased to expand our relationship with Microsoft and the options we provide for our customers by offering Fanatical Support for Azure.

“By adding support for Azure to our portfolio, we can now serve customers who want public, private and hybrid cloud environments built on the Microsoft Azure Stack,” Rhodes says.

Rackspace is a five-time Microsoft Hosting Partner of the Year and has provided managed cloud services on Microsoft technologies including Microsoft Cloud Platform with Hyper-V, System Center 2012 R2 (full suite), System Center Operations Manager 2007, SQL Server (2005, 2008, 2008 R2, 2012, and 2014), Exchange, SharePoint and Office365.

The Fanatical Support for Azure offering includes Microsoft specialised expertise, managed support, architectural guidance, proactive monitoring, and database support as Rackspace database specialists are available as an on-demand service for SQL Server Instances as well as customers' SQL databases running on Azure Virtual Machines.

Customers have two purchasing options:

•  Fanatical Support with Azure Bundle (Infrastructure and Support): Customers can purchase Azure infrastructure and support as a bundle from Rackspace, whose experts can help them with architectural and on-boarding guidance.
•  Fanatical Support for Azure (Support Only): Customers who already use Azure infrastructure and want support and management expertise can get Rackspace managed services for their infrastructure as a separate cost based on their infrastructure spend.

 “As organisations increasingly incorporate cloud services as part of their overall IT portfolio, the reality for many is that it introduces complexity into their environment,” said Michelle Bailey, 451 Research, SVP Datacenter Initiatives.

“Cloud providers offering deep expertise around planning, migrating and managing enterprise-class production workloads is a massive gap in the market right now.

“With Fanatical Support for Microsoft Azure, Rackspace is responding to the needs of their customers looking for a trusted advisor to help ease the transition to cloud and derive maximum benefit from their investments,” she says.

The offering will expand to International customers through early 2016.