Rackspace Acquires 'Cloud Cockpit' Developer

Hosting services provider Rackspace said Thursday it acquire Cloudkick, a developer of tools designed to ease the management of cloud-based servers.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Cloudkick said it would continue to operate from its San Francisco location and that its employees would join Rackspace. The two-year old startup was initially funded by venture firm Y Combinator. Its roster of 1,500 customers includes Fortune 500 companies to small businesses.

Cloudkick's offerings are aimed at IT and business managers who need a unified way to manage enterprise servers that are maintained offsite. "Until now, the cloud has been about automating hardware and making it more agile and efficient," said Lew Moorman, Rackspace's chief strategy officer, in a statement.

"But as cloud computing has made it easier to launch servers, companies launch a lot more of them, and use many of them inefficiently—and even lose track of some. Cloudkick brings order to that chaos and sprawl," said Moorman.

Cloudkick's dashboard, or "cockpit", gives IT managers a single view of remote servers, physical or virtual, even if they're maintained by different providers.

"It takes cloud computing to a new level, into automation of the work of system administrators," said Moorman. "In addition to providing robust cloud health information, Cloudkick enables automation around deployment and scaling," said Moorman.

Cloud computing is growing in popularity as enterprises look to lower IT costs and simplify their infrastructure. Under a cloud setup, businesses tap applications and services from remote servers that are often maintained by a third party.

Rackspace shares were off 1.19%, to $30.75, in morning trading Thursday.