After more than 10 years of partnership with VMware Inc., Rackspace Inc. now runs one of the largest vSphere (cloud computing virtualization platform) footprints in the world. So when the managed service provider recently announced that its Rackspace Private Cloud was available and would be powered by VMware’s Cloud Foundation, the news was yet another sign that information technology customers were embracing the multicloud enterprise model.

“Rackspace continues to be the multicloud company offering our customers the choice and flexibility they want. From a VMware perspective, we’re really trying to help people determine how to move out of the data center or at least not extend the data centers as they have been right now,” said Peter FitzGibbon (pictured, left), vice president and general manager at Rackspace Inc.

FitzGibbon spoke about Rackspace’s recent news and other topics during a visit to theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio. He talked with host Stu Miniman (@stu) and guest host Keith Townsend (@CTOAdvisor) during the VMworld conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, and was joined by Ajay Patel (pictured, right), senior vice president of product development of cloud services at VMware Inc. They discussed the need for specialized resources, customer support and getting a handle on enterprise workloads. (* Disclosure below.)

Getting value out of expensive technology

Rackspace has built its reputation around customer service in the enterprise through a branded program called “Fanatical Support,” 24/7, 365-day availability for rapid response. That service has been extended across multiple cloud platforms, including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.

“It’s what we truly see as our differentiator in the market,” FitzGibbon said. “These are expensive and difficult technologies to use. We want to make sure people are getting the true value out of [the Network Virtualization and Security product] and [virtual storage area networks] and now with VCF, which we’re really excited about.”

As the deployment of new technologies for on-premises, private and public clouds grows in complexity, the need for specialized expertise to manage it all becomes a critical part of the IT operation.

“The biggest challenge and constraints are skilled resources,” said Patel, who characterized Rackspace’s value proposition as “having 150 specialists out there with fanatical support and the great VMware technology.”

Customers often turn to Rackspace because they lack a clear picture to fully understand where workloads are placed in the infrastructure, a problem that can easily happen as business units grow organically.

“They just don’t have visibility,” said Patel, who said the advice he provides is “know where your data is, know where your workloads are, and how much they are costing you.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of VMworld 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for VMworld 2017. Neither VMware Inc. nor Rackspace Inc. have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE