Rackspace Names Joe Eazor CEO, Interim CEO Cotten to Remain President

Joe Eazor, former EarthLink CEO and president, has been named Rackspace CEO less than a month after Taylor Rhodes said he would be leaving the managed cloud company. Eazor will officially start in his role on June 12.

Eazor, who served as CEO at Earthlink since 2014 and led the company to its $1.1 billion sale to Windstream in February, will be responsible for Rackspace’s global strategy and operations.

“I’m proud and excited to welcome Joe to Rackspace,” David Sambur, senior partner at Apollo Global Management and chairman of the Rackspace board of directors said in a statement.“Joe has had a long and successful career growing IT services businesses. He has a proven reputation for driving investment and allocation of resources to the areas that will generate the best returns. Joe has led large and complex organizations.  And he will be a good fit as CEO for Rackspace, a company whose culture is a unique asset that has produced industry leading Net Promoter Scores and low customer churn.”

Interim CEO Jeff Cotten will remain as Rackspace president as Eazor takes on duties of CEO.

“All of us feel that Joe will be a great culture fit, as well as a very effective CEO,” Cotten said in a statement. He worked with Eazor at EDS nearly a decade ago. “Joe brings deep IT services experience, and strong leadership qualities. I look forward to working with him.”

Prior to Earthlink, Eazor served in executive roles at EMC, HP and EDS. He is currently on the boards of Commvault Systems and Discover Financial Services.

“As soon as the call came about Rackspace, I knew that was where I wanted to go,” Eazor said. “I know the company. I’ve visited the headquarters and felt the spirit there, and watched Rackers at work. I admire Rackspace’s well-earned reputation for expertise and Fanatical Support® — and for a workplace culture that makes that great support possible.

“I’m excited by the huge market opportunity that Rackspace has, as companies move out of their corporate data centers and into multiple clouds,” he added. “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. Thanks to the strategy Rackspace adopted a few years ago, it’s got the early lead in the managed cloud space. My goal here is to build on that foundation and make us the world’s preeminent IT-services company.”