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Rackspace Appoints Industry Veteran Will Knight To Drive Channel Strategy

10:37:50 - 07 April 2014

Enhanced Partner Network Emphasizes Specialization, Fanatical SupportĀ® and Hybrid Cloud Solutions to Deliver Increased Benefits

SAN ANTONIO, TX--(Marketwired - April 07, 2014) - Rackspace® Hosting (NYSE: RAX), the open cloud company, today announced that industry veteran Will Knight has been named the new Vice President of Channel Partner Sales. Mr. Knight is an international business leader with more than 20 years of experience in the IT industry across sales, marketing and channel strategies. 

At Rackspace, Knight is responsible for building strategic and competitive channel partner programs, while driving overall partner sales. Prior to joining Rackspace, Knight was an executive at Microsoft where he served in a range of partner- and customer-facing roles across the U.S., China and Singapore. During his tenure in Singapore as Microsoft's Cloud Sales and Geo Expansion Lead for Asia Pacific, Knight more than doubled the business in the first year and expanded operations throughout Southeast Asia. Most recently, he served as Microsoft's Small and Medium Business Leader for Asia Pacific, where he led sales, marketing and channel management for SMB across the region.

"A massive growth opportunity exists within the cloud market, and executing a channel strategy to engage partners in a meaningful and collaborative way is key to Rackspace Partner Network's future success,"said Todd Cione, SVP Sales, Americas at Rackspace. "Will is a proven leader who has built winning channel programs for top IT organizations across the globe, and we are excited for him to join the team."

In his new role at Rackspace, Knight will lead the company's enhanced partner network, which encompasses a variety of programs designed to help companies engage with Rackspace in a way that best meets their unique business needs. These programs emphasize specialization, Fanatical Support and support for hybrid cloud solutions to deliver short and long-term benefits to partners and to reward them more easily for their efforts.

"Hybrid cloud is driving innovation in the market, and our robust portfolio of hybrid cloud solutions, specialized expertise and a growing partner ecosystem puts Rackspace in a unique position," said Knight. "We've enhanced our programs to help us map to our partners' specific needs more easily. The Rackspace Partner Network delivers a flexible way for our partners to build their businesses utilizing Rackspace service offerings." 

Rackspace's Partner Network programs include:

  • Reseller Program - Allows companies to incorporate hybrid cloud hosting into their current product and service offerings. Resellers get access to key benefits such as competitive discounts, sales, marketing and technical resources, and on-demand training.
  • Referral Program - Provides a simplified process for referring Rackspace's dedicated bare metal, Rackspace Private Cloud (RPC), public cloud, and email hosting to partners' customers and prospects. Referral partners are rewarded for referring leads.
  • Cloud Affiliate Program - Enables companies to earn money and drive revenue through their own website by using Rackspace-approved web banners and text links.
  • Strategic Program - Designed for companies who deliver enterprise IT infrastructure services, system integration, digital marketing, content and ecommerce solutions.

"With the addition of Will Knight and by evolving a stronger, more diverse set of partner programs, Rackspace has shown that it's ready to double down on its channel strategy," said IDC analyst, Steve White. "As its channel program matures, Rackspace will appeal to an even broader ecosystem of partners, which will help support future business growth in the U.S. and abroad."

About Rackspace
Rackspace (NYSE: RAX) is the global leader in hybrid cloud and founder of OpenStack, the open-source operating system for the cloud. Hundreds of thousands of customers look to Rackspace to deliver the best-fit infrastructure for their IT needs, leveraging a product portfolio that allows workloads to run where they perform best -- whether on the public cloud, private cloud, dedicated servers, or a combination of platforms. The company's award-winning Fanatical Support helps customers successfully architect, deploy and run their most critical applications. Headquartered in San Antonio, TX, Rackspace operates data centers on four continents. Rackspace is featured on Fortune's list of 100 Best Companies to Work For. For more information, visit www.rackspace.com.

Forward Looking Statement
This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of Rackspace Hosting could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including any statements concerning anticipated operational and financial benefits from Rackspace strategies related to additions or changes in leadership, the success of leadership transition, company growth or success of new sales initiatives, any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the integration and effectiveness of the new leadership into the Rackspace culture, the continuation of the current difficult economic conditions or further fluctuations, disruptions, instability or downturns in the economy, the effectiveness of managing company growth, infrastructure failures, technological and competitive factors, regulatory factors, and other risks that are described in Rackspace Hosting's Form 10-K for the quarter and year ended December 31, 2013, filed with the SEC on March 3, 2014. Except as required by law, Rackspace Hosting assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements publicly, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future.

Contact Information

Media Relations Contact:
Brandon Brunson
210-312-1357
brandon.brunson@rackspace.com

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