By samdizzy

Former Rackspace (NYSE:RAX) Chanel Chief Christopher Rajiah has jumped to ViaWest, where he will lead the cloud and managed service provider’s direct sales and channel efforts. It’s a big win for ViaWest, which named Rajiah VP of worldwide partner sales.

Rajiah will also drive ViaWest’s marketing organization, driving messaging, branding and go-to-market strategies for the full colocation, cloud and managed services portfolio, the company said.

Rajiah was a key channel leader at Rackspace, which recruited a range of channel veterans from hardware companies like 3Com, AMD, Extreme Networks to build its partner program. More recently, Rackspace combined multiple partner program platforms into a single approach for VARs, MSPs, digital marketers and resellers.

We’ll be checking in with Rajiah to see what his first steps will be at ViaWest.

We’ll also reach out to Rackspace for updates on its channel program. Rackspace seems to have reached an inflection point. The company is making a lot of noise this week at the OpenStack Summit in Portland, Oregon, but recent Rackspace financial results have not impressed Wall Street.

There were recent rumors that IBM (NYSE:IBM) was looking to potentially buy either Rackspace or SoftLayer, but so far those rumors have failed to generate an M&A deal.