Rackspace announced today that is has launched new cloud services. It is calling its new cloud capabilities the “world’s first large-scale, production ready next generation cloud.” The services are built on Rackspace’s OpenStack open-source cloud platform and backed by their “Fanatical Support” customer service guarantee.

“The open era of the cloud is a reality and Rackspace has positioned itself at the forefront of this massive, technological shift,” said Lanham Napier, CEO of Rackspace. “We’re drawing a line in the sand against proprietary cloud providers. With this launch, Rackspace is providing an open cloud alternative, backed by Fanatical Support and our core expertise on OpenStack, to deliver a strong product portfolio that will help customers navigate their way through an increasingly complex cloud environment.”

The products Rackspace is offering include servers, databases, block storage, and networks. This is in addition to existing Rackspace capabilities such as “Cloud Files” object storage, cloud load balancers, private clouds, and content delivery networks. The services are configurable through the “Cloud Control Panel” and can be monitored with Rackspace’s “Cloud Monitoring.”

“The expansion to its OpenStack cloud offering has given Rackspace a more comprehensive portfolio of solutions, which now spans across computing, storage and networking. The ability to address critical business needs in these key areas will help them open new doors and extend their reach to a broader range of customers,” said Melanie Posey, research vice president at International Data Corporation. “Rackspace’s Cloud Networks solution in particular is going to eliminate some of the hesitation businesses have around cloud adoption by providing a programmatic approach to networking, which in turn, enables more seamless hybrid cloud and virtual data center implementations.”

It’s clear that the market for cloud computing solutions is growing as the demand for flexible, on-demand platforms increases. Amazon Web Services last week announced its scalable CloudSearch service.