Ah, the ever-evolving world of cloud computing.

It can be easy to forget that the cloud is still an emerging technology, mostly because the hype surrounding it already has it pegged as the future of the Web, but that is also precisely why every advancement in the industry is a (potentially) big deal.

Hybrid Hosting from Rackspace
Recently, Rackspace, one of the world’s largest cloud computing companies, unveiled new enhancements to its RackConnect service that offer “unified integration of the Rackspace Cloud and dedicated hosting in a hybrid environment.”

This new blending of technologies, which Rackspace refers to as Hybrid Hosting, will provide customers with the flexibility and quick scalability of the cloud, but also the security and performance of dedicated hardware.

For companies, including many enterprise-level businesses, RackConnect offers an affordable solution that allows them to easily integrate the cloud into their existing technologies. Thanks to the addition of Hybrid Hosting, these same customers can now add dedicated hosting from a trusted provider, striking "the elusive balance” of offering strong performance, low cost and high security, which reduces (or totally eliminates) trade-offs that a single platform would likely require.

“We are seeing the market react positively to the availability of a product that gives customers a hybrid computing solution, which allows them to use cloud and dedicated computing together more seamlessly,” says Rackspace’s Chief Technology Officer John Engates. “In fact, many of our more technically sophisticated customers are using RackConnect as a part of their computing architecture today.”

Additional Enhancements
In addition to integrating Hybrid Hosting into the RackConnect solution, the company has also listened to feedback from its customers and developed three new key enhancements to the product.

RackConnect will now automatically configure servers that are kept in the cloud to a dedicated environment, as well as instantly adding load balancers to them.

It also includes bolstered security features that make it simple for customers to configure network security policies like physical firewalls or cloud server-based software firewalls without having to go through managed server technicians. Security can now be automatically applied across an entire environment.

Finally, there will be many more options for customers to choose from when using the solution, including cost effective hybrid, enterprise hybrid, load balancing and VPN cloud bursting services.