Dare we say, we have a juicy cloud news roundup in store for you today. Over at VMware, the top five execs stand to make a lot — a lot — of money if they leave once the $61 billion Broadcom acquisition closes. We break down the amounts and the buckets those millions will come from.

Earlier this week, Kevin Jones, CEO of Rackspace Technology for almost four years, lost his job. We caught up with industry analyst Holger Mueller for deeper insight into the turnover (this marks Rackspace’s fifth top leader since 2016). We also get Mueller’s perspective on what new CEO Amar Maletira needs to do to help the struggling managed service provider.

In other hot cloud news, we’ve got a look at Akamai’s strategy for indie cloud provider Linode. Those details have been six months in the making, and channel partners will want to understand what’s in store. That’s because many a partner was feeling skeptical about a content delivery network vendor that targets large organizations taking on a cloud provider that serves small firms and developers.

Finally in this week’s cloud news roundup, we take a peek at Google Cloud’s expansion plans (forgive us our 12-year-old movie reference — it was irresistible). And, on a similar note, Synergy Research Group has new data on European cloud providers.

Check out the week’s biggest cloud news in the slideshow above.