Rackspace unveils two cloud service products

Rackspace on Tuesday launched two products to bridge its cloud and hosting businesses and take advantage of hybrid datacentres.

The move, which was previewed on Rackspace's most recent earnings conference call, gives the company an avenue to bring managed service levels for cloud computing customers. The two new products are Cloud Connect, which aims to give customers easy integration between its cloud computing services and dedicated hosting; and Critical Sites, which is an effort to ensure service levels via advance monitoring.

John Engates, chief technology officer of Rackspace, said Cloud Connect is essentially a managed hosting service with the ability to expand into the cloud as requirements warrant. "Cloud connect can be used as overflow from a private to public cloud environment in a compliance driven way," he said.

For more on this ZDNet UK-selected story, see Rackspace launches Cloud Connect: A hosting, cloud hybrid service on ZDNet.com.