This is the third partner of the year award Rackspace has achieved in the past six years. Rackspace says its most significant accomplishment as a Microsoft partner in the past year was its global launch of managed Microsoft Exchange, which gives companies of all sizes access to an on-demand and highly available deployment of one of the world's most widely-accepted email and collaboration solutions. Rackspace's fully-managed service approach transforms Microsoft Exchange Server into a simple and scalable solution in which customers only pay for the mailboxes they plan to use, says the company.

"Rackspace has been a long-time hosting partner that has demonstrated its talent and expertise year after year, raising the bar in the design and deployment of customer solutions built on Microsoft technologies," says John Zanni, director of worldwide hosting at Microsoft. "Consuming applications as a service, such as hosted Microsoft Exchange, is becoming increasingly popular among small and medium-sized businesses, so it's no surprise that managed Microsoft Exchange from Rackspace is the fastest-growing product in their suite of email solutions."

The Partner of the Year Award in Advanced Infrastructure Solutions was announced last week at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Denver, Colorado.

Rackspace recently named Doug Loewe managing director of Europe, Middle East and Africa.