Managed services company Rackspace Inc. has said it’s expanding its private cloud capabilities through VMware Inc.’s Cloud Foundation.

The company on Monday confirmed the general availability of its Rackspace Private Cloud on VMware’s Cloud Foundation, which is a software-defined data center platform that incorporates VMware’s vSphere, vSAN, and NSX products. VMware’s Cloud Foundation can be used both on-premises for private cloud deployments, or “as-a-service”, from public clouds, and is designed to ease the adoption of hybrid cloud strategies.

Rackspace said its private cloud delivers software-defined data center capabilities such as compute, networking and storage across both public and private cloud environments.

The idea is that Rackspace will help customers get the most out of their VMware deployments by building and operating the physical and virtual infrastructure they need for them. The company cites a recent 451 Research Inc. study that reveals how organizations are increasingly looking to free up IT staff from day-to-day tasks around infrastructure management, in order to focus on business objectives.

“Provisioning hardware quickly is no longer considered a value for customers, it’s expected,” said Peter FitzGibbon, vice president and general manager of VMware at Rackspace. “The enhancement in our VMware private cloud delivery model through VMware Cloud Foundation will provide further value to new and existing Rackspace Private Cloud by giving them access to the most streamlined and innovative VMware SDDC capabilities and lifecycle management

The move comes as Rackspace deepens its relationship with Amazon Web Services Inc., the leading public cloud provider. Last month, Rackspace said it was adding new services to help customers assess their workloads, including server types, configurations, network topology, security and governance requirements, and choose an AWS system architecture that best fits their needs. Rackspace will also take care of migrating those workloads to AWS, it said.

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