Rackspace adds Windows Server support to its cloud

Rackspace has launched a beta for Windows Server 2003 and Server 2008 cloud computing services.

The offering, which was hinted at a few months back in an interview, will be fully supported by Microsoft. In a nutshell, Microsoft will allow its Windows customers to get the same technical support for Windows Servers in Rackspace's cloud as they would in a physical environment.

The program is currently under beta.

Here's a look at the pricing.

Rackspace's Windows effort comes amid a flurry of news for the company of late. On Monday, Rackspace reported third quarter net income of $7.6 million, or 6 cents a share. Revenue for the quarter was $162.4 million, up 17.4 percent from a year ago. The results were in line with expectations.

According to Rackspace, the bulk of that revenue derived from managed hosting services. Cloud revenue accounted for 10 percent of total revenue.

Meanwhile, Rackspace ended the quarter with 80,994 customers, up from 70,803 in the second quarter. In addition, Rackspace announced that its cloud would power the Posterous blog platform.