Is Rackspace Considering Going Private?

Rackspace (RAX) has been in the news lately not for its cloud computing products, but for the fact that it has been investigating the benefits of being acquired. And many suitors have been rumored. But now, two months after the acquisition rumors first started circulating, Rackspace’s board of directors may be investigating another option—going private.

According to a TechCrunch article, a source let it slip that Rackspace is considering pulling itself off of the public stock exchange and instead taking the route back toward being a private company. Apparently the board is taking cues from Michael Dell.

That’s not to say it will happen, as there are suitors that would love to get their hands on Rackspace, including—according to the source—Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and IBM (IBM), but the TechCrunch article noted that the idea of pulling the company off the market and going private is gaining “sufficient traction” within the board of directors.

Rackspace has been struggling to compete against the big players in the cloud, and the open source cloud project it helped to create has only managed to take hold in the private cloud market. Rackspace has bigger goals and aims to compete with the likes of Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

Being acquired makes a lot of sense, and it would add substantially to players that are also busy trying to compete with the biggest cloud computing companies. HP, IBM or even CenturyLink could make good use of Rackspace’s resources while also putting their own financial and technology assets behind Rackspace to ensure its future.

But should the right partner or acquisition not come to be, Rackspace becoming a private company once again could be the best way to go. The challenges of being a publicly traded company aren’t for every organization, and sometimes the financials and shareholders can get in the way of being innovative and doing business.