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Rackspace Technology Appoints Visionary Technology Executive Srini Koushik as Global Head of New Spin-up – Foundry for Generative AI by Rackspace

June 28, 2023

Rackspace Technology Appoints Visionary Technology Executive Srini Koushik as Global Head of New Spin-up – Foundry for Generative AI by Rackspace

Rackspace Technology Appoints Visionary Technology EXECutive Srini Koushik as Global Head of New Spin-up – Foundry for Generative AI by Rackspace

Appointment comes as leading multicloud solutions provider announces Generative AI offerings aimed at accelerating the responsible adoption of AI in organizations of all sizes

SAN ANTONIO, TX June 28, 2023 – Rackspace Technology® (NASDAQ: RXT) — a leading end-to-end, multicloud solutions company, today announced the appointment of Rackspace Technology CTO Srini Koushik as the global head of the company’s new spin-up Foundry for Generative AI by Rackspace (FAIR™.)

In a recent survey by Rackspace of more than 1,400 IT decision-makers, 90 percent of respondents said their cloud modernization efforts are motivated by their desire to leverage AI technologies.

Rackspace Technology has been at the forefront of innovation since its founding in San Antonio in the late 1990s. The company has celebrated a history of industry firsts – as it was one of the first to offer web hosting and deliver a hosted private cloud, to launch OpenStack public cloud in collaboration with NASA. Now, Rackspace is helping customers in their multicloud journey and enabling customer transformation through the rapid adaption of generative AI.

“The generative AI market is moving at a pace we haven’t seen since the emergence of technology and certainly in my 30-year career. Our new spin-up FAIR is addressing the urgent needs of businesses of all sizes by accelerating the secure, responsible, and sustainable adoption of generative AI solutions across industries,” said Amar Maletira, CEO of Rackspace Technology. “As a pure-play multicloud provider, we build on our industry-leading public and private cloud solutions to help our vast installed base of over 20,000 customers across all segments drive innovation in their businesses using generative AI. FAIR operates at start-up speed to serve these customers’ rapidly emerging needs, which will be paramount to our mutual success.”

Maletira also praised 35+ year technology industry leader and seasoned visionary Srini Koushik for accepting the role as the global head of FAIR and noted his proven track record of EXECution.

Koushik has been the Chief Technology Officer at Rackspace Technology since 2021 and is responsible for technology strategy and roadmap, thought leadership, information technology, and security. Koushik will retain his CTO responsibilities while leading the FAIR spin-up business.

“The convergence of cloud computing and AI has sparked a transformative revolution, democratizing access to artificial intelligence and ushering in the age of limitless possibilities with AI,” said Srini Koushik, CTO of Rackspace Technology and Global Leader for FAIR. “Whenever our customers needed to capitalize on the latest technology, we have been there with innovative solutions. From web hosting to the first public cloud based on OpenStack and modernization of application and data workloads to the Cloud – Rackspace has been there to help them. As our customers chart new territories with generative AI, we will help them become trailblazers in their transformative journeys by pioneering the responsible and sustainable use of AI solutions.”

Before his position at Rackspace Technology, Koushik was General Manager and Managing Partner for Hybrid Cloud Advisory Services at IBM Consulting. He worked closely with CIOs there, shaping their hybrid cloud strategies and fostering innovation. Earlier, he was the CIO & CTO for Magellan Health, where he built an Exponential IT organization that helped the company double its revenue over four years. Koushik was also President and CEO of NTT Innovation Institute Inc., a Silicon Valley-based start-up building multi-sided cloud platforms for digital businesses. Earlier in his career, he held C-Level roles at HP, Nationwide Insurance, and IBM.

Koushik has received numerous accolades for his innovative thinking and dynamic leadership. He was inducted into the CIO Hall of Fame in 2023 and received the Global Ohio CIO ORBIE®. Koushik has been named an IBM Distinguished Engineer twice and is an inductee into the IBM Academy of Technology. Among his global recognitions include the Sustainable IT Social Impact award (2023), Computerworld Premier 100 Leader (2014), an Elite 8 CIO (2002), and Infoworld’s Top 25 CTOs (2004). Koushik also serves on the advisory boards for GmbH, SustainableIT.org, Platform9, and Clarigent Health.

About Rackspace FAIR

FAIR is a groundbreaking global practice dedicated to accelerating the secure, responsible, and sustainable adoption of generative AI solutions across industries. FAIR aims to be a force multiplier to accelerate the pragmatic and secure use-case-based adoption of generative AI in businesses across all industries. It builds on unique Rackspace Technology IP and multicloud capabilities along with their global footprint to facilitate:

  • Scaled and Global AI/ML, MLOps, Analytics, DataOps, and Application and Data modernization for the Cloud.
  • Open Innovation is powered by Industry-leading partnerships with AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and an extended ecosystem of open-source AI providers and,
  • AI Private Cloud capabilities, including GPU-based high-performance computing, low latency storage solutions such as Rackspace Data Freedom, and secure networking across 30 plus global data centers, to focus on the kinetics of data needed to build advanced AI models in a private, secure, and on-demand environment.

Generative AI Offerings to Drive Customer Success

  • FAIR Generative AI Ideation Workshop: An interactive and collaborative ideation workshop that helps organizations uncover actionable use cases for generative AI with defined business impacts. AI readiness diagnostics provide critical considerations for successful AI adoption.
  • FAIR Generative AI Incubate: An agile and iterative program that co-creates an enterprise’s first generative AI solution. It establishes the technology stack and assesses the viability of AI, ensuring seamless integration into organizational processes.
  • FAIR Generative AI Industrialize: A systematic effort to transform the AI solution into a product, implementing governance, defining metrics, and optimizing the AI model and Distributed Cloud Infrastructure for continuous improvement.

Click here to register for the FAIR Generative AI Ideation Workshop.

Click here to learn more about unlocking limitless creativity with the power of generative AI.

About Rackspace Technology

Rackspace Technology is a leading end-to-end multicloud technology services company. We can design, build, and operate our customers’ cloud environments across all major technology platforms, irrespective of technology stack or deployment model. We partner with our customers at every stage of their cloud journey, enabling them to modernize applications, build new products and adopt innovative technologies.

Media Contact: Natalie Silva, publicrelations@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.