Rackspace Launches OpenStack Amazon Cloud Rival

Rackspace announced today it is going to make its OpenStack-based cloud services open to European businesses this August, as it looks to offer an alternative to popular proprietary clouds like that of Amazon Web Services. Having announced the beta phase this April, when a host of products were made available based on OpenStack, the open source project the cloud vendor launched with NASA in 2010, Rackspace has now followed through on its promise to bring OpenStack into the second largest public cloud in the world.

In the UK, services including Cloud Databases, Cloud Servers, Cloud Networks and Cloud Files object storage with a content delivery network will be available from 15 August. The Rackspace Open Cloud services were made available today. Previously, Rackspace offered a proprietary cloud, but it has fully embraced the open model in recent years. It is also a contributing member and beneficiary of Facebook’s Open Compute Project, which is hoping to create more open and efficient designs for vendors to use...