FortyCloud, an Israeli cloud security service, announced today it was joining the Rackspace Marketplace to provide Rackspace customers with cloud security services and the ability to safely connect between different cloud products.
Like any good partnership if it offers something to both parties giving FortyCloud access to Rackspace customers, who then get access to FortyCloud’s cloud security layer with a variety of security services including firewall, VPN, encryption and monitoring and auditing as a cloud service. FortyCloud has access to the identity and authentication layer, so it can determine who the user is and what resources they can access.
Alon Maimoni, VP of marketing at FortyCloud says his company is joining Rackspace’s Marketplace to give Rackspace customers the ability to manage security in the cloud in a way they have been used to doing on-premises while giving them the ability to scale as the business grows that only the cloud can provide.
He says, these types of partnerships are important to all startups, but particularly to cloud-based ones because it gives them access to a broader market than they could get on their own by combining different cloud services into a more comprehensive offering. In the case of Rackspace, Maimoni says, they are packaging so-called ‘best of breed’ solutions and FortyCloud gets to be part of that. “It’s a good strategy because we learned when there is a cloud provider and partner working with a customer, it makes a better relationship,” he said.
Maimoni says FortyCloud particularly liked the way Rackspace treats customers and the way they build customer relationships. One of the ways Rackspace has tried to differentiate itself in an increasingly crowded cloud infrastructure marketplace dominated by big players like Amazon, IBM, Google and Microsoft is by offering superior customer service.
It’s worth noting that Rackspace, one of the founders OpenStack, announced in May that it was looking for a partner or a buyer. So far nothing has come of that, but more recently, TechCrunch reported that the company might be trying to go private instead.
Regardless, Maimoni says FortyCloud is involved with Rackspace around OpenStack and company CTO and co-founder Amir Naftali is working with Rackspace and the OpenStack community around OpenStack security as part of this partnership.
Maimoni says they ultimately aim to be platform agnostic and work across whatever cloud platform, customers are using. In fact, he alluded to the fact that the Rackspace deal is only one of several partnerships they plan to be announcing in the coming months. From FortyCloud’s perspective, the more platforms they work on, the more they can secure each individual platform and interoperate between them as well.
PHOTO CREDIT: (c) Can Stock Photo