Rackspace, a high-end hosting solutions has added Microsoft SharePoint in their list of cloud computing offerings. This is an added feature which gives VARs the ability to engage their customers on the Digital Collaboration tool of Microsoft.
Rackspace plans to add SharePoint together with their relaunch of their Email & Apps reseller program. Rackspace allows their resellers to offer their customers up to 250 MB of SharePoint storage space that is free of charge. Above the 250 MB space, resellers are charged by $8 per GB per month which is a $20 percent discount of the direct pricing of Rackspace.
250 MB is a starter storage capacity and given the power of SharePoint, I would expect users to quickly use this space up as they find uploading all their files and work documents to the portal convenient and beneficial for their productivity.
Rackspace also offers educational Webinars for their partners to get up to speed with SharePoint. After that, Rackspace would also offer how-to-video on SharePoint which can be added by their partners on their website.
In the long-term vision, Rackspace wants their customers to start moving into the cloud and utilize enterprise features of SharePoint which includes a full feature Digital Collaboration environment.
Kirk Averett who is the director of product Email & Apps at Rackspace has this to say: “Our channel partners want the opportunity to sell more products into their customer base. It’s an opportunity for us to gain a customer we never could have otherwise and to create a new source of revenue for the reseller. It’s a great extension of our e-mail platform.”
A hosted SharePoint environment should see higher adoption in SMBs who do not have the infrastructure and budget to implement SharePoint similar to large enterprises and a hosted solution should be their best option for implementing a Digital Collaboration and document management in SharePoint.
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SharePoint 2010 is coming straight ahead and we only need to wait a little over two months before the next version of SharePoint officially comes out.
