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Rackspace announced Joe Eazor as its next chief executive on May 24, 2017. He was scheduled to take over on June 12, succeeding Taylor Rhodes, with Jeff Cotten serving as interim CEO during the transition. Eazor brought enterprise technology and services experience from EarthLink, EMC, EDS and HP Enterprise Services as Rackspace concentrated on managed services for customers using multiple public clouds.
Who Joe Eazor was before Rackspace
Eazor was EarthLink’s chief executive from 2014 to 2017. Before that, he was executive vice president and chief operating officer for global sales and customer operations at EMC, held executive positions at EDS, and became senior vice president and general manager of HP Enterprise Services, according to Commvault’s 2017 proxy.
That background made him an enterprise technology and services operator, not simply a telecommunications executive. CRN reported that Eazor led EarthLink through its sale to Windstream for $1.1 billion. Coverage differs on whether the transaction closed at the end of 2016 or in February 2017, so the safest description is that he led EarthLink during the acquisition announced in that period.
When Eazor joined Rackspace
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| May 2017 | Taylor Rhodes left Rackspace; Jeff Cotten became interim CEO. |
| May 24, 2017 | Rackspace announced Joe Eazor as CEO. |
| June 12, 2017 | Eazor’s scheduled start date. |
| April 24, 2019 | Rackspace announced that Kevin M. Jones succeeded Eazor as CEO. |
The appointment therefore followed Rhodes’s departure by several weeks rather than representing an immediate same-day change. Cotten handled the company while Rackspace prepared for Eazor’s arrival.
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Why Rackspace chose him
Rackspace was repositioning itself around managed cloud services and support instead of focusing primarily on traditional hosting. After Apollo Global Management acquired and privatized Rackspace for $4.3 billion in 2016, the company emphasized partnerships with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, CRN reported.
The business challenge was increasingly complex customer infrastructure: organizations were moving workloads out of corporate data centers while spreading them across more than one cloud. Rackspace needed an executive familiar with large enterprise sales, operations and services delivery who could scale that model across cloud platforms.
The strategy Eazor described
Managed services across several clouds
Eazor’s remit was to build on Rackspace’s support and managed-services foundation as customers adopted multiple clouds. The strategy was not to force customers onto one proprietary environment, but to help operate and support workloads across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform.
Serving the data-center-to-cloud transition
In comments reproduced by TechCrunch, Eazor said, “I’m excited by the huge market opportunity that Rackspace has, as companies move out of their corporate data centers and into multiple clouds.” That framing placed Rackspace between customers’ existing enterprise systems and the public-cloud providers they were adopting.
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An ambition beyond hosting
Eazor also stated: “My goal here is to build on that foundation and make us the world’s preeminent IT-services company.” The objective signaled a broader IT-services identity, with consulting, management and ongoing support complementing infrastructure hosting.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What happened after Eazor’s appointment
Eazor did not remain CEO indefinitely. Rackspace’s official release dated April 24, 2019, said Kevin M. Jones succeeded him as chief executive that day. The documented sequence is therefore Rhodes’s departure, Cotten’s interim period, Eazor’s June 2017 start, and Jones’s April 2019 succession.
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- Author: Bungay Stanier, Michael.
- Publisher: Page Two
- Pages: 244
- Publication Date: 2016-02-29
- Edition: 1
How the leadership change fits Rackspace’s evolution
- Taylor Rhodes: His departure in May 2017 preceded the search for a successor as Rackspace pursued its post-privatization direction.
- Jeff Cotten: He served as interim CEO while the company moved from Rhodes to Eazor.
- Joe Eazor: He brought enterprise-services and operating experience to the multi-cloud managed-services push from June 2017 until April 2019.
- Kevin M. Jones: He became CEO on April 24, 2019, succeeding Eazor.
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