Cloud computing is the field that has contributed a lot to the IT industry. In fact, the very technology is the basis of many leading companies and their success. Though cloud computing has been there for a while now, and many have adopted it for their businesses. But there are still many struggling to adapt to the rapidly changing environment and requirements for cloud computing. To solve these issues for businesses, Rackspace Technology came with its cloud computing platforms and management tools. For the past more than twenty years, the company has not only grown itself but has helped its client grow as well.
Rackspace is mainly known for its private cloud environment named OpenStack. OpenStack is a reliable cloud environment based on Red Hat, which has been built to provide affordable deployment, updating, and support for cloud solutions to companies.
About Rackspace Technology
RackSpace is twenty-three years old American Cloud-computing company, providing multi-cloud solutions across applications, data, security, and infrastructure. The company headquarters is based in San Antonio, Texas, U.S., serving customers all around the world. The company has 7,200 employees working for it in its various offices established globally. Apart from its headquarters in Texas, the company has offices in countries like the U.K., Dubai, India, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, etc. RackSpace has also established its data centres in Virginia, the UK, Chicago, Germany, Hong Kong, Australia, and Kansas City. It is a publically traded company and trades on the NASDAQ market with ticker RXT. As of 2019, the company made annual revenues worth US$2+ billion.
The Back Story
The founding team of RackSpace included Richard Yoo, Dirk Elmendorf, Patrick Condon, Morris Miller and Graham Weston. When cloud technology was a new and emerging field, well-established companies got easily comfortable with it. But the small and mid-size firms found it difficult to adapt to cloud computing and were lagging behind. The main reason behind the issue was that the companies really don’t know about cloud computing or were unaware of how to use it for their businesses. This way, from starting a business of application development, the founders ended up thinking of building an outsourcing company for hosting and managing the cloud services for businesses.
Richard Yoo as its CEO, all five founders founded RackSpace Technology in October 1998. From the beginning of the company, it was entirely focused on better services and support for its customers. The company received its first capital investment through a round of funding in March 2000, Norwest Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital being the major investors.
The unique idea behind the company helped it grow really fast, but alongside the facilities and growth opportunities for the employees also won 32nd place for RackSpace in Fortune’s “Top 100 Best Companies to Work For 2008”. The company was listed in the same again in 2011 and 2013. In 2008, the company went public on New York Stock Exchange and raised $187.5 million in its first IPO.
RackSpace worked independently for 18 years, and in 2016, Apollo Global Management announced that it will be buying RackSpace for a sum of $4.3 billion. The acquisition was completed in November of the same year, and RackSpace stopped trading on NYSE. In 2020, the company went public again, this time on the NASDAQ market with the symbol RXT.
In its more than twenty years of journey, RackSpace made some acquisitions that helped in its rapid growth. The companies acquired by RackSpace include Webmail.us (2007), Jungle Disk (2008), SliceHost (2008), SharePoint911 (2012), TriCore Solutions (2017), Datapipe (2017), RelationEdge (2018), Onica (2019), etc.
The Founder/CEO
Kevin M. Jones is the current CEO at RackSpace Technology. He is one of the leading business people in the field and has over thirty years of experience in technology services. Kevin went to James Madison University and earned a BBA degree. He is also a Certified Management Accountant.
Before becoming the CEO at RackSpace, Kevin has handled many leadership roles at various leading technology companies. He has served as the Vice President of HP’s Enterprise Services (the Asia Pacific and Japan). He was also the Vice President at EDS and Chief Customer and Sales Officer at Dell. At DXC Technology (DXC), Kevin worked as the Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Americas region. He was also the CEO at MV Transportation. In April 2019, Kevin joined RackSpace as the Director and the CEO.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.