Other companies have been offering VMware IaaS with the option for managed or self-managed environments and network integration to the customer's on-prem for many years now. So, really, the only interesting thing I can see here is that Rackspace - a traditionally OpenStack supplier - is adding VMware to the mix.
I would suggest that RackSpace have noticed that not every business compute problem is well suited to the OpenStack deployment/upgrade model and that a lot of businesses already have a lot of virtual machine instances in VMware format (vmdk).
Also, Anonymous Coward is just plain wrong with the assertion that vCenter Server will not run RedHat 6. I run it every day with vSphere 5.1.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
