Taken from the Rackspace Cloud blog, photos of the company's new nephologist Harper Reed demonstrating yo-yo tricks.
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Managed hosting provider Rackspace (www.rackspace.com) announced on Friday that it has named six new key personnel to the staff of The Rackspace Cloud (www.rackspacecloud.com), its cloud computing division – many of them notable names in the technology business.
The six new employees bring product development experience built at such organizations as Microsoft, Yahoo and Ubuntu developer Canonical.
”We’re very proud that Rackspace’s reputation for innovation, opportunity and growth are attracting top technical and business talent from industry players that have been there, and done that” says Rackspace Cloud general manager Emil Sayegh, quoted in the company’s press release. “We’re continuing investment to deepen our leadership product development bench to support our growth while expanding, and scaling our services.”
Former Threadless and skinnyCorp CTO Harper Reed has been named The Rackspace Cloud’s “Nephologist” – an actually-not-made-up word (apparently a branch of meteorology dealing with the study of clouds and cloud formations – cute). According to SiliconAngle, it means he’ll be “working on cool technology for customers, evangelizing the Rackspace Cloud, and serving as an all around technical expert.”
John Purrier, who previously led the team developing Microsoft Exchange, will serve as director of software development, leading its Cloud Files product, and helping the company’s Microsoft technology footprint in general.
Another Microsoft veteran, Michael Foster led data center automation projects at that company, as well as many startups. As head of cloud engineering, he will oversee technical operations, data center engineering and automation projects “allowing The Rackspace Cloud to scale seamlessly.”
Mark Collier, a former senior executive with Yahoo!’s media division, will serve as vice president of business development, leading the company’s efforts to develop new partnerships for cloud, email and applications and managed hosting.
A former “serial entrepreneur” and founder of website design company CoffeCup software, Nick Longo will serve as chief rainmaker. Longo will direct the company’s web marketing and community centered events.
Finally, as cloud servers and Slicehost development leader, Rick Clark will guide ongoing development for Rackspace’s infrastructure as a service offerings. Clark is formerly of Canonical, the company that produces the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution.
Sayegh, in a conversation with the WHIR, says the appointments named in the announcement actually cover the last two months, and that the news, from Rackspace’s end, isn’t so much about any one hire as it is about demonstrating the company’s ability to attract some of the best talent out there. “We need people that have been there and done that and are some of the best in the industry,” he says.
Rackspace is well known for its company culture, and is widely regarded as a great place to work, ranking number 43 on Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” list.
Sayegh says that in some cases – particularly Longo and Reed – the new employees were customers who were great fits with the company’s culture, and so Rackspace created positions for them. In other cases, the company sought out the people who could fill specific technology needs. Both of the men coming from Micosoft, for instance, have experience with projects of massive scale.
“We are a service company with a technology focus, and we’re delivering service through technology,” he says. “So one of the key criteria is cultural fit, and in many cases we’ll meet someone with a great cultural fit, and we’ll say ‘can this person fit somewhere at Rackspace?’ But in the case of some of the technology hires, we did go after these guys specifically because of their expertise.”
