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Rackspace boosts dev tools with cloud database buy

Rackspace has bought Exceptional Cloud Services, an error tracking and database company, in a bid to bolster the tools.
Written by Sam Shead, Contributor

Rackspace has acquired San Francisco-based Exceptional Cloud Services (ECS) for an undisclosed sum in a bid to improve the toolset it offers developers tasked with deploying and managing applications in the open cloud.

The deal, announced on Thursday, will enable Rackspace to roll out ECS' error tracking and Redis-as-a-Service database capabilities to its datacentres over the course of 2013, starting in the US and expanding later to the UK and other EMEA countries.

Redis "is a way of storing semi-permanent data that needs to be shared, for example, between databases and web servers," Simon Abrahams, Rackspace's head of market strategy, told ZDNet on Wednesday.

Rackspace also acquired ObjectRocket last month, a company which provides the MongoDB database-as-a-service for storing large quantities of more permanent information.

"Redis-To-go and ObjectRocket will play nicely together," said Abrahams. "They're different kinds of databases that offer different things. Inasmuch as MongoDB is more like a permanent repository for more important information, Redis-To-Go is more like an advanced cache for impermanent information that is nonetheless quite important."

By aligning the two applications, Rackspace will be able to provide developers with a choice of open source based data platforms delivered as managed services. The company claims that these platforms increase speed and reduce complexity when it comes to building applications on the Rackspace Open Cloud.

Rackspace will also be integrating ECS' error-tracking tool, Exceptional.io, into its Open Cloud platform to provide real-time information into application errors and provide information that can be used to fix them.

The company also said it would add Airbrake.io to its cloud platform so customers can collect errors generated by other applications and aggregate the results for review.

Rackspace launched its Open Cloud platform in 2012 with a suite of compute, storage and networking offerings to meet increased developer demand for more tools and capabilities.

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