Last week, cloud services vendor Rackspace announced it was buying the SharePoint consulting firm SharePoint911, giving Rackspace a seasoned team of SharePoint consulting veterans to support its online SharePoint services.

Melanie Posey, research vice president for hosting and managed network services at IDC says it's an important addition for the company. "Rackspace's acquisition of SharePoint911, a company dedicated to end-user SharePoint adoption, is a key strategic development, given that one of the primary barriers to broader SharePoint usage in businesses is the lack of comprehensive design, development, training, and end user support services to drive innovative SharePoint implementations," she said.    

Rackspace has been offering managed SharePoint services since 2008, but Alan Pelz-Sharpe, an analyst with the Real Story Group says this purchase gives them a way to differentiate themselves in the marketplace.

"Like a lot of hosting services Rackspace lacks quality dedicated consulting services, and the acquisition of SharePoint911 provides them with some skilled SharePoint professionals to help build out their hosted SharePoint business," Pelz-Sharpe said. 

Pelz-Sharpe says it's it could help RackSpace compete with Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), especially as Redmond offers increasingly sophisticated online services. "As Microsoft themselves build out their hosted offerings with enhancements to Office365 and yet-to-be-released SharePoint15, it is important for many in the channel to prepare for what will likely be a much tougher environment to compete in," he said.

According to a blog post on the RackSpace site, the 16-member SharePoint911 team includes 6 Microsoft MVPs, which collectively have published at least 10 SharePoint books. 

For more information:
- see the RackSpace press release

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