Rackspace joins F5 Networks for Cloud Connect

SEATTLE: F5 Networks, Inc., a player in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced that Rackspace another player in the hosting and cloud computing industry, chose F5 BIG-IP products as the foundation for its innovative Cloud Connect service.

Cloud Connect is a hybrid architecture that allows customers to mix dedicated and cloud based hosting platforms for scalability, flexibility, and efficiency. With an F5 BIG-IP solution, Rackspace customers can provision resources, secure and manage network traffic, and balance workloads in real time among the two environments, states a press release.

We chose BIG-IP as a cornerstone of Cloud Connect because with it, we can make our customers’ dedicated servers and cloud environments communicate seamlessly with each other over a protected, private network,” said Toby Owen, Product Manager for Hybrid Hosting Solutions at Rackspace. “This solution does much more than provide a physical connection; it allows customers to take advantage of BIG-IP’s intelligent traffic management capabilities between dedicated and cloud servers. Furthermore, BIG-IP has already proven itself as a reliable and cost effective component of our infrastructure.”

With Cloud Connect, Rackspace customers gain cloud computing benefits without the burden of rewriting their entire application to adapt to the cloud. Cloud Connect is especially useful for companies that experience seasonal traffic spikes. For example, an e-commerce company can now respond to peak demand periods by “bursting” a predetermined segment of its operations–such as its web catalog–to run in the cloud, while keeping its payment processing on highly secure, dedicated servers, all within a Rackspace data center.

“We are pleased to be part of Rackspace’s Cloud Connect service,” said Jason Needham, Senior Director, Product Management at F5 Networks. “Rackspace’s enterprise customers can receive great benefit from their ability to access cloud based resources safely on demand.”