openAdmin
07-15-2009, 12:59 AM
Positioning its cloud hosting services as an alternative to Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_EC2),Rackspace (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rackspace) announced today (http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/071409_Rackspace_Launches_Cloud_Servers_API_for_Ia aS) the public availability of Cloud Servers API (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_programming_interface) based on representational state transfer (REST) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REST).
Taking an open-source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source) approach, Rackspace’s (http://www.rackspace.com/index.php) 43,000 cloud-computing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing) customers played a major role i[/URL]n the API specifications, explained Emil Sayegh general manager for The Rackspace Cloud, formerly branded as [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosso_%28cloud_computing%29"]Mosso (http://www.rackspace.com/images/header/logo.png) cloud hosting. They overwhelmingly preferred the newer lighter-weight REST approach to the older heavy-duty SOAP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAP) standard that Amazon uses, he said.
“With the number of companies that provided input into this API, the way I see it this is their design,” he told BriefingsDirect. “This API is based on their input.”
This open community approach is a major differentiator between Amazon and the Rackspace alternative.
The next step in Rackspace’s strategy is to open source the API, which according to Sayegh will be announced soon. He notes that Amazon has no announced plans to go to open source.
“What we’re seeing is customers are really clamoring for an alternative to Amazon,” Sayegh said, acknowledging that Amazon is the market leader while positioning Rackspace as the number two that is trying harder.
“We have the largest platform as a service (PaaS) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PaaS) in cloud sites,” Sayegh said. “We are definitely in terms of size second to Amazon.” He sees today’s release of the API strengthening the Rackspace Cloud position in the market.
For the rest of the story, goto Cloud Computing Journal (http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/1035244)
Taking an open-source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source) approach, Rackspace’s (http://www.rackspace.com/index.php) 43,000 cloud-computing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing) customers played a major role i[/URL]n the API specifications, explained Emil Sayegh general manager for The Rackspace Cloud, formerly branded as [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosso_%28cloud_computing%29"]Mosso (http://www.rackspace.com/images/header/logo.png) cloud hosting. They overwhelmingly preferred the newer lighter-weight REST approach to the older heavy-duty SOAP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAP) standard that Amazon uses, he said.
“With the number of companies that provided input into this API, the way I see it this is their design,” he told BriefingsDirect. “This API is based on their input.”
This open community approach is a major differentiator between Amazon and the Rackspace alternative.
The next step in Rackspace’s strategy is to open source the API, which according to Sayegh will be announced soon. He notes that Amazon has no announced plans to go to open source.
“What we’re seeing is customers are really clamoring for an alternative to Amazon,” Sayegh said, acknowledging that Amazon is the market leader while positioning Rackspace as the number two that is trying harder.
“We have the largest platform as a service (PaaS) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PaaS) in cloud sites,” Sayegh said. “We are definitely in terms of size second to Amazon.” He sees today’s release of the API strengthening the Rackspace Cloud position in the market.
For the rest of the story, goto Cloud Computing Journal (http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/1035244)