I think your making assumptions about how easy it is to build a succesful product. It's easy to look at the winning horse and say "Well that horse only cost X, and trained for Y years. I'll just go buy a horse for the same amount and train him for the same time."
Consider how many different people/organizations were trying to accomplish what cloudkick has? You're cutting a check to get the best version of all their efforts.
Additionally, Rackspace has become fairly large, I'm sure there are sufficient politics in that organizaiton to force any in-house app right off the rails. The marketing manager would want the app to only measure all the places where rackspace wins. Any top shelf talent would be poached by the orgs core business units etc... Even starting with the winner in this area, they may still fall behind.
Consider how many different people/organizations were trying to accomplish what cloudkick has? You're cutting a check to get the best version of all their efforts.
Additionally, Rackspace has become fairly large, I'm sure there are sufficient politics in that organizaiton to force any in-house app right off the rails. The marketing manager would want the app to only measure all the places where rackspace wins. Any top shelf talent would be poached by the orgs core business units etc... Even starting with the winner in this area, they may still fall behind.