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Kevin M. Jones Appointed as Rackspace Chief Executive Officer

April 26, 2019

Rackspace announced the appointment of Kevin M. Jones as Chief EXECutive Officer, effective as of today. Mr. Jones most recently served as Chief EXECutive Officer of MV Transportation, Inc. As CEO of Rackspace, Mr. Jones will be responsible for the company’s global strategy and operations, spanning the U.S. and the four other continents where Rackspace maintains offices and data centers. Mr. Jones succeeds Joe Eazor.

“I’m thrilled to welcome Kevin as the CEO of Rackspace,” said David Sambur, senior partner at Apollo Global Management and chairman of the Rackspace board of directors. “He has an outstanding track record of leading and transforming businesses by inspiring organisations to increase revenue, profitability, market share, customer satisfaction and employee engagement.

“On behalf of the entire board of directors, I would also like to thank Joe Eazor for his contributions to Rackspace during his tenure. Joe has guided Rackspace through three acquisitions (TriCore, Datapipe, and RelationEdge) and built a truly world-class leadership team around him, while helping crystallise Rackpace’s strategy and unique value proposition. Joe also has instilled financial and operational disciplines that will help the company scale into the future.

“Rackspace today helps companies transform and manage their IT infrastructure and applications to unlock the best performance at the lowest cost. It does this by helping companies leverage the latest cloud technologies and environments, whether it be SaaS, public cloud, private cloud, or multi-cloud, while also recognising the reality of legacy IT that still needs to be optimised.

“With unbiased expertise in solutions, innovative service delivery models including Service Blocks, a commitment to Fanatical Experience™, and a recognised ecosystem of award-winning partnerships with winning cloud and technology companies, Rackspace today meets customers wherever they are on their cloud and broader IT transformation journey. The movement to modern cloud technologies, while customers continue to operate legacy environments, yields a level of complexity that demands the talent, expertise, and services that we believe Rackspace is the best-suited company to provide. 2019, in particular, is a critical year for the Company, and we are proud that Rackspace is off to a strong start. The Company is financially stronger than ever and on track in achieving its near and long-term goals. We thank Joe for his leadership in getting Rackspace to this point and we wish him the best in his future endeavors.”

Commenting on his appointment, Mr. Jones said, “I am very excited to join Rackspace and its incredible leadership team. I have always admired Rackers’ passion for providing customers with an unparalleled experience. Rackspace has an industry-leading growth strategy as it continues to partner with customers on their digital transformation journey, and I look forward to working with the team as we help customers accelerate the value of the cloud. Rackspace is the best partner in the marketplace to help any company decide how to utilise the cloud and get the most out of its cloud applications.”

Prior to being named CEO of Rackspace, Kevin served as Chief EXECutive Officer of MV Transportation, the largest privately owned transportation contracting firm in the United States, employing more than 20,000 transit professionals in 153 locations across North America. While serving as MV’s CEO, Kevin led a successful turnaround of the business including its financial, sales, safety, and employee engagement performance. During his tenure, the company:

  • achieved the highest revenue-and second highest profit performance in the company’s 44-year history,
  • greatly improved sales performance and win rate,
  • created several strategic partnerships – including the first-in-the-industry partnership with Uber, and
  • improved employee engagement and reduced turnover

Before joining MV, Kevin held global leadership roles at DXC Technology, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Dell, Hewlett Packard (HP) and Electronic Data Systems (EDS). At DXC and HPE, Kevin and his team transformed the Americas into the company’s most profitable region. Before joining DXC and HPE, Kevin served as chief customer and sales officer for Dell Services, where he led all go-to-market functions for applications, business process outsourcing, infrastructure services, and cloud computing businesses. Kevin previously spent 21 years in EXECutive positions at HP and EDS in both Europe and Asia, with a focus on strengthening customer relationships throughout his career.

Kevin holds a BBA from James Madison University and is a Certified Management Accountant. He completed the EXECutive Training Program – Leading Strategic Change at Indiana University. Kevin also serves as a board member for the North Texas Food Bank and the World Affairs Council of Dallas.

For additional information on Rackspace, please visit: www.rackspace.com.

About Rackspace

At Rackspace, we accelerate the value of the cloud during every phase of digital transformation. By managing apps, data, security and multiple clouds, we are the best choice to help customers get to the cloud, innovate with new technologies and maximise their IT investments. As a recognised Gartner Magic Quadrant leader, we are uniquely positioned to close the gap between the complex reality of today and the promise of tomorrow. Passionate about customer success, we provide unbiased expertise, based on proven results, across all the leading technologies. And across every interaction worldwide, we deliver Fanatical Experience.™  — the best customer service experience in the industry. Rackspace has been honoured in the top 20 Great Places to Work Australia for the past 7 years. Learn more at www.rackspace.com.au.

Media Contact:
Vanessa Cremona
Vanessa.Cremona@rackspace.com

About Rackspace Technology

Rackspace Technology® (NASDAQ: RXT) is the operator of the full enterprise AI stack from governed private cloud to AI inference and agents in production. With an Outcomes-as-a-Service model built on secure infrastructure, data foundations, and forward-deployed engineering, Rackspace delivers business results for regulated and mission-critical industries where governance, sovereignty, and uptime are non-negotiable. Learn more at www.rackspace.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements generally relate to future events and can be identified by terminology such as “believe,” “may,” “will,” “potentially,” “estimate,” “continues,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “could,” “would,” “project,” “plan,” “expect,” “is putting,” “designed to,” or the negative of such terms or other similar expressions, although not all forward-looking statements contain these words.

 These statements include, but are not limited to, Rackspace Technology’s relationship with NVIDIA and the NVIDIA Cloud Partner Program, its Enterprise AI Cloud strategy, the anticipated capabilities, benefits and timing of its Institutional Sovereign Pod architecture, Rackspace’s outlook on the AI industry and its ability to deliver, operate, and scale AI infrastructure and solutions for regulated, institutional and sovereign enterprises. Forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, including, without limitation: Rackspace's ability to realize the anticipated benefits of its relationship with NVIDIA and the NCP program; the availability, cost, and timing of deployment of NVIDIA and other third-party technology; Rackspace's ability to develop, market, and scale the Institutional Sovereign Pod and related offerings on the anticipated timeline or at all; market acceptance of and demand for sovereign and governed AI infrastructure solutions; competition in the AI infrastructure and cloud services markets; capital expenditure requirements associated with AI infrastructure buildout; availability of financing for the AI infrastructure buildout on terms acceptable to Rackspace; Rackspace’s reliance on a limited number of technology partners, including NVIDIA; cybersecurity, data privacy, and regulatory compliance risks associated with serving regulated and sovereign customers; general economic and industry conditions; and other risks and uncertainties described in Rackspace's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. Rackspace undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by law.