Rackspace Wins 2017 Red Hat Innovator of the Year Award

DUBAI, UAE, 18th June, 2017 — Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Rackspace®, a leading managed cloud provider, won the 2017 Red Hat Innovator of the Year award. It was selected as the Innovator of the Year out of five finalists and category winners for the 2017 Red Hat Innovation Awards after a public vote.

Rackspace was recognized for its collaboration with Red Hat to build an enterprise, managed private cloud solution built on Red Hat OpenStack Platform. The result was Rackspace Private Cloud powered by Red Hat, which launched in February 2016. This offering includes other Red Hat technologies such as Red Hat Ceph Storage, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Satellite and Red Hat CloudForms, with Fanatical Support® and operations from Rackspace layered on top.

Rackspace also worked with a Red Hat Technical Account Manager to help develop the solution, and used Red Hat Training and Certification to gain expertise on Red Hat OpenStack software and tools. Ultimately with Rackspace Private Cloud powered by Red Hat, end users can receive the agility and efficiency of public cloud with the security features, control and performance of enterprise private cloud software provided by Red Hat, all coupled with managed services from Rackspace, which has industry-leading OpenStack operational expertise. Through this collaboration, Rackspace contributes to Red Hat’s continued efforts to improve the Red Hat OpenStack Platform by testing for broad hardware and software compatibility, performance and availability. Red Hat and Rackspace also work together on version and feature updates.

The 2017 Red Hat Innovation Award category winners include Barclays Bank; the Government of British Columbia; the Government of the State of Jalisco, Mexico; Macquarie, and Rackspace. The category winners were selected by a panel of judges, including Red Hat executives, technology journalists and analysts, representatives from the 2016 Innovator of the Year, Amadeus.

Since 2007, the Red Hat Innovation Awards program has recognized the technological achievements of customers and partners who demonstrate creative thinking, determined problem-solving, and innovative uses of Red Hat technologies. Winners have included leaders from around the world and across industries who are using open source solutions to transform their organizations and enable faster innovation.

Supporting Quotes
Bryan Thompson, general manager, OpenStack Private Cloud, Rackspace
“We are honored to be recognized as the 2017 Red Hat Innovator of the Year amongst some tough competition,” said Bryan Thompson, general manager of OpenStack Private Cloud at Rackspace. “We launched Rackspace Private Cloud powered by Red Hat more than one year ago with the goal of meeting customer demand for Rackspace’s operational expertise and Fanatical Support on top of their OpenStack distribution of choice. This recognition from public vote is a testament to the success and innovation of the product as an enterprise-grade managed OpenStack offering, as well as the collaboration between Rackspace and Red Hat. We look forward to continuing to work with Red Hat to refine and innovate Rackspace Private Cloud powered by Red Hat.”

Marco Bill-Peter, vice president, Customer Experience and Engagement, Red Hat
“Rackspace and Red Hat have worked together for more than 13 years to bring open source to enterprise customers. Our latest collaboration is a testament to what can be accomplished by using innovative thinking and problem solving to meet changing customer needs. It is an honor to name Rackspace as the 2017 Red Hat Innovator of the Year.”