Rackspace To Name New Global Channel Chief

According to the San Antonio-based cloud and hosting upstart, come 2012 Christopher Rajiah will take over of as vice president of Rackspace's global partner program and U.S. channel sales. Since joining Rackspace in early 2010, Rajiah has held the position of director and vice president of North American channels.

Rajiah will succeed Robert Fuller, Rackspace's vice president of worldwide channel sales, who is moving out of Rackspace's channel organization and into a new role as vice president of global enterprise solutions, Rackspace confirmed.

Under Fuller's channel leadership, Rackspace launched a streamlined channel program, which unified the four disparate partner offerings from across its portfolio. The new program marries Rackspace's once-siloed partner programs for cloud computing, managed hosting, e-mail hosting and Rackspace Cloud Drive into a single program. At the time of the program launch, Rackspace boasted more than 4,500 partners.

As the new channel chief, Rajiah brings a wealth of channel experience. Prior to joining Rackspace, Rajiah held the channel chief spot at Extreme Networks and was a 10-year veteran of that company. In 2008, Rajiah was instrumental in the major overhaul of Extreme's channel program.

Rajiah's move to channel chief comes as Rackspace continues its upward trajectory. This year, Rackspace became a $1 billion company and has continued to sharpen its talons in the ongoing battle for cloud and hosting supremacy.

And Rajiah and Fuller aren't the only moves Rackspace is making as it charges into 2012. Last week, Rackspace promoted Rackspace Cloud President and Chief Strategy Officer Lew Moorman to president of the company. In his new role, Moorman, which joined Rackspace in 2000, will still report to Rackspace CEO Lanham Napier.

In his previous position, Moorman drove Rackspace's strategic planning, product development, acquisitions and other business initiatives across the company, and as president of Rackspace's cloud he took the helm of what has become Rackspace's fastest growing business. Now, as president of the company, Moorman will continue to own strategy and product development, including cloud computing technologies, as well as Rackspace's global sales and support segments.