**NEW RESEARCH** Rackspace: Reaping the rewards of going private?

In August 2016, Apollo Global Management acquired Rackspace, which at the time was listed on the New York Stock Exchange (RAX). In the period prior to the move, it seemed Rackspace was being edged into a weaker competitive position. Global hyper-scale cloud providers (notably Amazon Web Services and Azure) were registering growth rates deep into double digits, while other local, specialist providers in the UK (such as Cloudreach, KCOM (initially as Smart 421), and Claranet) had built credibility and/or were moving forward on their cloud-led strategies. Rackspace was neither small and niche, nor did it have the scale and depth of the large IT services players it also bumped up against from a competitive standpoint.

Private equity backers often remove firms from the glare that comes with a public listing in order to implement fundamental changes – Dell being another example. In May of last year, we detailed some of the changes underway at Rackspace that we thought very evidently pointed to progression following on from Apollo’s initial investment. Furthermore, we believe those changes are helping Rackspace become more competitive in the market.

In this research note we look at some of the progress points to date and how the firm is shaping up in the UK... Rackspace: Reaping the rewards of going private?

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Posted by HotViews Editor at '09:54' - Tagged: hosting   PublicCloud   multi-cloud