Web hosting provider Rackspace Hosting (www.rackspace.com) announced on Tuesday it has launched Cloud Tools (tools.rackspace.com), an online service for sharing tools, applications and services developed by the company's strategic partners and independent developers for The Rackspace Cloud.
The new tools further expands on Rackspace's previous control panel and provisioning system for The Hosting Cloud, which was launched last year.
The new site is designed to match customers with companies and independent developers building services on The Rackspace Cloud platform that expand the functionality and openness of cloud computing.
The Cloud Tools site displays tools and applications developed on The Rackspace Cloud in four categories, including Monitoring & Reporting, Development Tools, System Management and Client Software.
On the site, visitors can browse the latest tools, search for features, rate the tools and post comments.
For specific tools, users can view screenshots and user ratings, review user feedback and view demo videos before being directed to the strategic partner's website for download.
The site also has a "From the Community" section offering independent developers a way to publish their tools built using The Rackspace Cloud APIs and offer them to customers.
Cloud Tools features tools from such companies as RightScale's cloud management platform, Mixpanel's real-time user interaction analytics, Cyberduck's open source file browser for Mac OS X that supports Rackspace Cloud Files.
There are also tools from 15 other partners and developers including Beanstalk, Cloud Mobile, Cloudkick, Django Cumulus, Elastic Rack, enStratus, jclouds, Jungle Disk, LibCloud, Olark Live Website Chat, rPath, SOASTA, Sonian, Vanilla, and Zeus. Other companies and developers have also said that they are planning to make their tools, applications and services available in the coming weeks.
Some of these tools are free while others can be purchased for a fee established by the developer.
"At Rackspace, it is a real priority to constantly seek out new opportunities to connect our customers with quality services," says Jim Curry, vice president of corporate development at Rackspace Hosting. "This tool-sharing service, along with our commitments to collaborate with the community to build an open cloud, lays the foundation for a large ecosystem. With the recent release of our APIs, we've seen an influx of interest in developing applications for our cloud computing offerings and we're pleased to announce that such applications can be featured in our new Cloud Tools site."
