For cloud services vendor Rackspace, going private has been a very positive experience, according to CTO John Engates. In a video interview with eWEEK, Engates details how becoming privately owned has helped the company advance its cloud initiatives.
In August 2016, Rackspace announced that it was going private in a $4.3 billion deal led by Apollo Global Management. Rackspace delivers both public and private OpenStack cloud services and also provides managed support offerings for other cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services (AWS).
“I think it simplifies our lives being a private company,” Engates said.
As a public company, Rackspace spent a lot of time explaining to investors why what the company was doing was important, according to Engates. Being a private company has helped Rackspace move faster and be more effective, he added.
Rackspace today is continuing to grow its private, public and managed cloud efforts, and is also moving into the container orchestration space with Kubernetes.
Engates said being a private company gives Rackspace a longer term strategic view of technology investments. “The public market looks at things on a quarter-by-quarter basis,” he said. “In a private company, you get to actually make bets that are longer term.”
Watch the full video interview with John Engates, CTO of Rackspace, above.