The new relationship will enable Israeli customers to benefit from Rackspace’s breadth of technology leadership in OpenStack® operations and its managed cloud experience across various cloud models. The firms will provide a special focus to help enterprises with OpenStack adoption underpinned by the convenience of purchasing services from a local company in Israel, plus the full guidance and support provided by professionals at Bezeq International.
In addition, Bezeq International will leverage the Rackspace OpenStack Everywhere solution* to offer managed OpenStack private clouds-as-a-service. These managed clouds can be deployed either on Bezeq International premises or in an enterprise’s own data center. For additional support, this relationship also brings the availability of professional OpenStack courses with Rackspace certification. These courses sit alongside OpenStack related professional services to help provide quick on-boarding and technology adoption.
Bezeq International CEO Moti Elmaliach said, “Cooperation with Rackspace sets a new standard of innovation and service for the cloud services available to businesses in Israel. We believe that this cooperation fulfils the need that we have identified among Israeli customers, who wish to expand and upgrade their businesses’ information management in an internationally-managed cloud, while at the same time benefitting from the services of a familiar local provider. We are grateful for the trust that the Rackspace management has placed in us, and are sure that the current cooperation will bring with it good news for the Israeli IT market.”
Rackspace operates eleven data centers around the world and has more than 6,000 employees. Its business is differentiated through its approach to managed cloud and the firm’s ability to solve the challenges of cloud adoption. Analyst firm Gartner ranks Rackspace as a leader in the Magic Quadrant for cloud enabled managed hosting in Europe and North America. A leader in managed cloud services and OpenStack operations, managing the largest public OpenStack public cloud environment, Rackspace serves customers in 120 countries including a majority of the Fortune 100. The company delivers expertise, tools and results-obsessed customer service called Fanatical Support® that spans across the industry’s leading public and private clouds - including OpenStack, Amazon Web Services® (AWS), Microsoft® Azure™ and VMware®.
“This strategic relationship with Bezeq International will be very helpful in terms of our expansion into Israel. As a leading innovator in its market and as owner of the country’s largest data center, Bezeq International is a natural and right fit for Rackspace,” said Alex Pinchev, Executive VP and president of global sales and marketing at Rackspace. A former president of Global Sales, Services, Field Marketing at Red Hat®, Pinchev served for six years in the Israeli army’s Center of Computing and Information Systems. He continues to be personally involved in the Israeli cloud market, shaping the market trends.
Speaking during a visit to Israel, Graham Weston, chairman and co-founder of Rackspace said, “Rackspace is extremely pleased to be working with Bezeq International given the firm’s technical expertise and local market knowledge. Rackspace regards Israel as a center for innovation and development where customers are ready to start a building new line of business competencies powered by managed cloud services and OpenStack. We believe that Rackspace tools, expertise and our results-driven approach to customer service is a natural fit to Bezeq International’s own specialized cloud engineering strength. We now hope to build on our presence in Israel and expand our managed services for multi-cloud environments in the country.”
As a result of this new relationship, Israeli customers will have the opportunity to choose the type and physical location of the cloud service they need whether it is public, private, or hybrid. Rackspace will help Bezeq International customers find the best fit where each workload can achieve the highest performance and cost-efficiency. With this new agreement, customers can also keep their clouds in Israel when needed, according to the type of work done by the business and the geographical locations of its customers.
Customers will also be able to choose whether to run the cloud at the customer’s own data center or at Bezeq International’s data center, with its enhanced reliability and security system, and pay Bezeq International directly, using a variety of payment methods, in shekels.
Rackspace and Bezeq International offer a unique service model for cloud services in Israel based on the following:
1. Managed cloud services: While most cloud-storage providers offer IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) cloud solutions, Rackspace provides managed cloud services across multi-cloud environments including OpenStack, Amazon Web Services® (AWS), Microsoft® Azure™ and VMware®. This expertise includes professional assistance in the process of fitting each solution’s architecture to the customer’s requirements, installing the environment, monitoring, optimization, consultation and shared management.
2. Service and support at the highest levels: 24x7x365 Fanatical Support provided by Rackspace in the US, UK and Israel and support and services from Bezeq International professionals in Israel.
