RapidScale: Combining Technical Acumen with a Strong Focus on the “People” Side of Technology

RapidScale is a managed cloud services and solutions provider that stresses technical acumen, significant deployment flexibility, and a relentless focus on customer satisfaction.

A Cox Business company, RapidScale serves clients of all kinds, from small businesses to large, globally distributed enterprises. This includes customers in many industries, among them automotive, education, financial services, healthcare, hospitality, insurance, legal, logistics, manufacturing, non-profit, real estate, retail, and software.

Based in Raleigh, NC RapidScale operates cloud infrastructure in six Tier-3 global colocation environments  in California, Illinois, Texas, Virginia, the Netherlands, and Hong Kong.

We recently caught up with Duane Barnes, general manager of RapidScale, and Robert Bergman, cloud services strategist, to learn more about RapidScale’s approach to cloud services, its focus on customer satisfaction, the dramatic increase in demand for Desktop as a Service (DaaS) solutions, and its work with VMware.

“We offer a full portfolio of advanced managed cloud services, but what really sets us apart from others is our cloud expertise in application delivery, our focus on security and compliance, and our commitment to the ‘people’ side of technology,” said Barnes. “Our team understands IT challenges and strives to help businesses gain the benefits of the cloud without the burden of having to learn the technology.”

The company offers services that are a one-stop shop that IT leaders can turn to for end-to-end solutions with simplified pricing and a high-touch support team that’s always there to support IT administrators and frontline users.

“Most importantly, we build everything around a relentless effort to maintain the industry’s leading customer satisfaction,” Barnes adds.

This keen focus on customer service and support is reflected in Rapidscale’s enviable customer satisfaction scores. At the conclusion of every support ticket, customers are asked to rate their experience with the company on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the best. The industry average is 3.6. Rapidscale’s latest customer satisfaction score in March of 2021 was 4.78.

“We’re very flexible for our customers,” says Bergman. “Some want to completely outsource the IT function to us, others want to co-manage it with us, and some simply want to take advantage of our advanced network and the ability we give them to manage and maintain the entire breadth of services we offer through a single pane of glass. Importantly, we actively solve any challenges users face on behalf of the IT departments, who entrust their mission-critical IT functions, data, and applications to us.”

This high-touch approach applies to all of RapidScale’s solutions. This includes its core offerings of Infrastructure as a Service, Backup as a Service, Disaster Recovery as a Service, Cloud Security, SD-WAN, Microsoft 365, Identity as a Service, and Managed Device-as-a-Service.

Not surprisingly, with more people working remotely, this customer-focused approach also applies to RapidScale’s extensive DaaS solution, which is experiencing greater demand than ever before. The company has offered DaaS since 2008.

Barnes notes that most organizations have limited IT resources, and all are being asked to operate under additional complexity. This includes supporting a distributed workforce that is becoming increasingly mobile while also delivering critical applications, ensuring that data is secure, extending the life of older devices, and avoiding any disruptions that impact users’ productivity.

“On top of all that, IT is being consistently asked to do all of this with less budget,” Barnes says. “They are also trying to offer their users the most modern operating system experience on the latest hardware, which is easier to achieve with DaaS than it is to deal with lengthy traditional hardware refresh cycles. The cloud offers the ability to address most, if not all, of these concerns but moving there isn’t without its challenges. This includes the reality that many employees are now remote and not in the office, which creates a lot of complexities not only for users, but also for service providers that aren’t familiar with offering DaaS and may not know where the challenges typically lie.”

RapidScale’s DaaS features VMware’s Horizon platform, which is a robust multi-tenant environment that utilizes VMware Dynamic Environment Manager (DEM) for managing user profiles and NSX Enterprise for integration across vCenters and networks. Virtual desktop options include both persistent and non-persistent desktops, economical session-based hosts, and desktops with advanced graphics (GPU) capability.

“We use VMware’s Horizon platform because it is highly scalable and secure, and offers us the ability to deliver a virtual desktop experience for our customers that is very comparable to what they get with a physical workstation,” adds Barnes. “Being VMware Cloud Verified also reinforces our value proposition as a strong and knowledgeable partner in the VMware ecosystem and as an asset to organizations seeking to offload part or all of their IT responsibilities to the cloud – all without having to worry that their partner can’t handle the responsibilities involved. With VMware’s stamp of approval they know every solution will be effective and can be trusted.”

Learn more about RapidScale and its partnership with VMware here.