Former CenturyLink Exec to Lead Rackspace's Private Cloud, Managed Hosting Business

**Editor’s Note: Click here to see which channel people were on the move in May.**

Rackspace has hired David Meredith, previously CenturyLink’s president of global data centers, as its president of private cloud and managed hosting, charged with leading the company’s single-tenant business. His goal will be to grow the business through investments and product strategy.

Rackspace’s David Meredith

Meredith will assume partial responsibilities from Mark Roenigk, Rackspace’s chief operating officer, who is leaving the company effective June 28.

“We are excited to have someone with David’s experience joining our team,” said Jeff Cotten, Rackspace’s president and interim CEO. “Rackspace helped invent the managed hosting business in the late 1990s, and it has remained the largest portion of our business to date. By strengthening our leadership position in this space, we can gain the business of enterprises that are increasingly outsourcing workloads they don’t want to re-architect for the public cloud. David will work closely with our marketing, sales and support functions to accelerate growth in this business. I am confident that David is the right person to lead this charge, and he will be a valuable addition to the company and our leadership team.”

At CenturyLink, Meredith was responsible for profit and loss (P&L) oversight, product management, marketing, sales, operations, expansion, service delivery and analytics for 57 data centers and related services across North America, Europe and Asia. CenturyLink just last month finalized the sale of its data-center and colocation business to BC Partners, a consortium that includes private equity firms Medina Capital Advisors and Longview Asset Management.

Meredith has led international managed hosting businesses in roles including senior manager, president, CEO and board director. His experience spans a range of industry verticals, from venture-backed firms such as NeuPals in China to business units of large public companies such as Capital One, CGI and VeriSign.

“As a pioneer in the managed hosting business, Rackspace is strongly positioned to succeed in a market where businesses want help moving out of their legacy data centers so they can be more strategic in their IT operations,” he said. “I’m pleased to be joining the Rackspace team at such an exciting time in the company’s history, and in the industry overall. I look forward to locking arms with teams across the business to deliver managed hosting and single-tenant solutions to customers in a way that is efficient, strategic and provides the highest value ‘Fanatical Support.'”