Looking into learning/running Rackspace Private Cloud @ home

[SirEvan]

So the other day I was reading about Rackspace's private cloud software that you can run in your datacenter, or at home. Got me wondering about it, and interested in learning about it. Can anyone give me a beginners no-duh explanation of what it is, and why you would want it? Is it basically just like running a hypervisor like Hyper-V or ESX? From what I see it looks like a way to make Virtual environments.

Thanks!