Rackspace adds SharePoint to hosted services portfolio

Customers get first 250MB storage free with new service.

Rackspace has added Microsoft SharePoint to its portfolio of hosted services, providing a business-grade collaboration tool for customers of its hosted email and application offerings.

The new service is available as an add-on for Rackspace's hosted Email & Apps services (Microsoft Hosted Exchange and Rackspace Email) and the first 250MB of storage is free, according to the firm.

Customers now have the option to access an enterprise-grade collaboration platform without needing to manage their own in-house SharePoint server, the firm said.

Fabio Torlini, Rackspace marketing director for EMEA, said that the company's Email & Apps division is a rapidly growing business, and now hosts more than 1.6 million inboxes.

"We already sell a hosted Exchange service, and we decided to offer a full collaboration suite as the next step. Customers have been requesting this, so we are expecting rapid take-up," he said.

The hosted Exchange and SharePoint are both part of Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite of services, which Rackspace is hosting and reselling.

The SharePoint offering is initially available only as an extra to hosted email, but the firm will make it available as a standalone service in the near future on a per-user per-month basis.

Rackspace will also "carry on adding apps" to the portfolio in the future, Torlini added.