Cloud hosting giant Rackspace (RAX) has thrown a bone to Microsoft (MSFT) cloud fans with the announcement that it is extending support to Hyper-V, System Center, Windows Server and Windows Azure Pack as part of its managed cloud offerings.

Rackspace is packaging the new support for Microsoft's cloud platforms as part of an effort to grant more choice to customers. "We've learned that our customers desire a cloud that truly works for them. In some cases that means our OpenStack-powered Rackspace Private Cloud, and in others it means with Microsoft technology," Jeff DeVerter, SharePoint architect at the company, wrote in a blog post about the news.

Rackspace is also betting that Microsoft cloud users will be particularly attracted to managed cloud services. "Rackspace customers who use Microsoft software tend to be looking for the 'whole package,'" DeVerter added, "meaning they want a place to host their servers along with a partner who can work with them to ensure they run better here than anywhere else in the world."

Indeed, the company seems so enthusiastic about its new Microsoft offerings that it can be hard to remember how important Linux, OpenStack and other open source projects also are to Rackspace's hosting solutions. In a reflection of just how momentous an announcement the company thinks this is, DeVerter wrote, "I feel like the first 15 years of Rackspace was getting us ready for this moment."

Microsoft, for its part, seems pleased with the deal. Marco Limena, vice president of Hosting Service Providers at Microsoft, said, "We are very excited about today’s news with Rackspace, as we build on our longstanding partnership, and look forward to working together over the coming years."

Rackspace's Microsoft cloud offerings are available in the hosting company's U.S. data centers.