Datacentre provider Rackspace has today announced details of its latest hosting facility for the Europe, Middle East and Africa market.

The company said that its new Platform Hosting solution had been created as an alternative to co-location, and would allow customers to control all aspects of their hosting environment, while still being backed up by strong service level agreements and secure, managed hardware.

Rackspace offers a managed hosted environment that comprises the datacentre, network infrastructure and equipment, but the customer retains control over the administrative tasks of their operating systems, networking devices, monitoring, use of storage and applications, the firm said.

"For some years now, co-location has been the only viable option for organisations that have the technical expertise on staff to administer their infrastructure but don't want the burden or escalating costs of managing their own datacentre facility," said Brian Thomson, managing director of Rackspace.

"Co-location still requires having resources close by and an inventory of hardware in the event of a failure, which can be a huge burden for IT departments.

"Our customers required a solution where the hardware burden still rests with Rackspace but full control of the applications and systems reside with them. Thus Platform Hosting was born."

Rackspace claims to offer a flexible hosting solution that can scale to a customer's growth, while a team provides design, deployment and infrastructure support. The firm offers a 100 per cent network uptime guarantee and a one-hour hardware replacement guarantee.