Rackspace on Tuesday said it has acquired Mailgun, a small San Francisco-based company, to add cloud-based email services into its product portfolio.
Mailgun provides APIs for users to send, receive and track email from their applications without having to manage an email server.
The service is used in platforms such as Heroku, AppFog and Engine Yard.
[Related: Rackspace Moves OpenStack Product Lineup To Public Cloud]
Pat Matthews, senior vice president for corporate development at Rackspace, said the management of email servers for websites and Web applications has been a sore point for customers.
"In the past, developers had to set up email servers on the back end, but it's a pain to do it and it takes a lot of time and effort to do it," he said in an interview with CRN. "We want our customers to be able to use email services like this, but we want to take the management out of it for them.
"Many companies use email on the backend -- Facebook, LinkedIn, Google," Matthews added. "It's really a standard way websites and Web apps are communicating."
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
PUBLISHED AUG. 28, 2012
