To say it has been a busy week at Rackspace would be something of an understatement. The company has announced the appointment of Joe Eazor as its new chief executive while also unveiling the acquisition of enterprise app management provider TriCore Solutions.
Eazor joins Rackspace having previously headed up EarthLink. The company had specialised in dial-up internet but moved into the 21st century with the addition of a cloud and networking portfolio, a shift with which Eazor is credited, culminating in a billion dollar merger with Windstream announced in November last year.
The company’s missive indicated no strategic shift this time around, however, with Eazor saying he was ‘excited by the huge market opportunity that Rackspace has’ in managed services.
“Rackspace is uniquely well positioned to take advantage of this trend, as the only provider who can deliver expertise and exceptional customer service for all of the leading public and private clouds, along with managed hosting,” Eazor said in a statement
“Thanks to the strategy Rackspace adopted a few years ago, it’s got the early lead in the managed cloud space,” he added. “My goal here is to build on that foundation and make us the world’s preeminent IT services company.”
This was expanded upon in a blog post titled ‘Why I’m joining Rackspace’ – the valedictory post from outgoing CEO Taylor Rhodes at the beginning of this month was naturally titled ‘Why I’m leaving Rackspace’ – where Eazor discussed the importance of leaving the public arena. “As a private company, we can move more aggressively and rapidly to allocate resources for long-term growth, to enhance our product offerings, to expand into new geographies and make smart acquisitions,” he wrote.
Lo and behold, news on the latter duly arrived with intention to buy TriCore Solutions. The company serves approximately 275 managed service customers and aims to ‘deliver services on infrastructure in any location the customer chooses’. This all rings nicely with Rackspace’s ambition, announcing a partnership with Google to become its first managed cloud services support partner in March, as well as noting ‘strong demand’ for AWS cloud customers, as well as Microsoft and OpenStack private cloud in its Q216 results last August.
The transaction is expected to close in June with financial details not disclosed, while Eazor starts his new role on June 12.
Picture credit: Rackspace Afterparty TechStars Boulder 2011, by Andrew Hyde, used under CC BY / Modified from original