Rackspace launches FAIR practice around generative AI

American cloud solutions provider Rackspace Technology has joined the growing list of companies creating offerings and launching practices around generative AI space.

The multi-cloud provider unveiled a generative AI practice called Foundry for Generative AI by Rackspace (FAIR) that aims to take customers through the technology adoption process, from ideation to industrialization.

The company said in a statement that it will help clients in “secure, responsible and sustainable adoption of generative AI solutions across industries”. “It (FAIR) builds on unique Rackspace Technology IP and multicloud capabilities along with their global footprints, it said.

That said, the company plans to tap resources including the AI/ML and data services through its acquisition of Singapore-based AI data analytics firm Just Analytics in January 2022.

While the acquisition helped the company expand its footprint in the Asia Pacific and Japan region, Rackspace's partnerships with hyperscalers and open source AI companies such as Hugging Face and Stability AI will also play a role in its generative AI services.

In February of this year, Rackspace began to develop its own generative AI service for an internal use case, including boosting the productivity and effectiveness of go-to-market teams.. The company developed Rackspace Intelligent Co-pilot for the Enterprise (Rackspace ICE). This platform uses a large language model (LLM) to train and understand a corpus of data. The data is all accessible via a natural language processing (NLP) based interface.

This same internal use case can now be leveraged by its customers to help them get a better handle on enterprise data. In fact, the company also said that under the FAIR platform, over 100 use cases have been identified across multiple industries, and several first-of-a-kind implementations across the globe are under development.

 “As we extend our AI/ML capabilities, we are committed to pushing the boundaries of what is possible with generative AI,” said Amar Maletira, CEO of Rackspace Technology, adding that “we aim to develop solutions that leverage the full potential of generative AI across various industries”.

 The launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 sparked interest in generative AI among enterprises -- and prompted service providers to develop offerings. Not just Microsoft, Google and Nvidia, who are aggressively dominating the AI space, last week, IT firm Intuit unveiled its AI strategy, Adobe announced plans for a new generative AI subscription plan, and Cisco Systems also announced new AI tools for its WebEx video conferencing software.

Further, professional services firm Accenture in March 2023 set up a generative AI and large language model center of excellence. This week, the company plans a $3 billion investment in its data an AI practice, which will add 40,000 AI roles. In May, PwC took the wraps off plans to invest $1 billion to help customers deploy generative AI, while KPMG disclosed its intention to integrate Microsoft's generative AI wares into its project delivery platform.