Rackspace Acquires Exceptional Cloud Services, Extends Developer Toolset

"Today, there is nearly an infinite number of client device configurations that will be accessing any given Web application," said Bret Piatt, director of corporate development and strategy at Rackspace. "You can't really test for everything that you are going to see out in the real world. So, developers need to be able to catch all the exceptions and errors in an efficient manner so that they can fix the problems quickly and easily."

Products to be acquired through the acquisition agreement include Exceptional.io and Airbrake.io, which work together to track errors in Web applications in order to help developers resolve any issues that might otherwise go unnoticed prior to launch.

[Related: Rackspace Acquires ObjectRocket, Cuts Bandwidth Prices ]

"[Exceptional Cloud Services'] team shares a common vision and culture," said Piatt. "We are very committed to the open cloud and open systems. In the long term, we believe that open systems innovate more quickly and produce better quality outcomes. And, their product solves a real need in a quality way."

Meanwhile, Redis To Go, which manages Redis instances, is the third prominent product acquired through the deal. The San Antonio-based hosting provider plans to integrate Redis To Go with its MongoDB database-as-a-service offering from ObjectRocket, which Rackspace acquired earlier this year. The net result is expected to enable developers to gain high-speed access to MongoDB data while also providing extended support for lists, hashes and sorts.

"If you need a super-fast low-latency data access, you can pair Mongo and Redis together," explained Piatt. "You can render a view out of the Mongo data store into Redis to improve the overall speed at which the views can be rendered to the users."

Terms of the agreement to acquire Exceptional Cloud Services were not disclosed. The company was founded in 2010, and it reports fewer than 50 employees. Its development and product team will remain in San Francisco, but the sales and support team will be relocating to the Rackspace's San Antonio headquarters. Exceptional Cloud CEO Jonathan Siegel will remain with the company.

"We are creating services that allow developers to more easily and rapidly create applications," said Piatt. "We will provide end-to-end visibility across the cloud environment, which is critically important."

PUBLISHED, MARCH 28