New Rackspace CEO Joe Eazor Previously Held Roles at EarthLink, EMC

San Antonio—Cloud computing company Rackspace has a new CEO: Joe Eazor, who was most recently the CEO of EarthLink, the company best known for providing dial-up Internet since the 1990s.

Eazor is replacing Taylor Rhodes, who left Rackspace this month to take the top job at Chicago-based software company SMS Assist. Rackspace President Jeff Cotten, who is filling in as an interim CEO until Eazor starts on June 12, is staying with the company as its president.

Rackspace has historically provided business customers with hosting services and server space for their operations, though it has increasingly shifted its work toward providing customer service and support to businesses that use cloud offerings, such as Amazon or Microsoft. In a blog post, Eazor said he plans to continue to “take advantage of this trend,” though he didn’t go into detail about other potential changes at Rackspace.

Rackspace was acquired by funds associated with New York-bsed Apollo Global Management late last year for $4.3 billion.

Since 2014, Eazor worked in the top role at EarthLink, a company that has added new services in recent years, in particular, cloud networking services for businesses. Eazor’s tenure at the company culminated in the sale of EarthLink to Little Rock, AR-based networking communication company Windstream in February for $1.1 billion.

Before EarthLink, Eazor worked as the chief operating officer for global sales and customer operations for Hopkinton, MA-based EMC.

Author: David Holley

David is the national correspondent at Xconomy. He has spent most of his career covering business of every kind, from breweries in Oregon to investment banks in New York. A native of the Pacific Northwest, David started his career reporting at weekly and daily newspapers, covering murder trials, city council meetings, the expanding startup tech industry in the region, and everything between. He left the West Coast to pursue business journalism in New York, first writing about biotech and then private equity at The Deal. After a stint at Bloomberg News writing about high-yield bonds and leveraged loans, David relocated from New York to Austin, TX. He graduated from Portland State University.