Rackspace Taps North American Channel Chief to Lead Global

Rackspace, the cloud platform and managed hosting provider, is set to begin 2012 with Christopher Rajiah as its new international channel chief. His official title will be VP of the Rackspace Global Partner Program and U.S. Channel Sales. The news comes shortly on the heels of Rackspace opening its new facility in San Francisco, marking the company’s first physical presence on the West Coast.

Rajiah is a relatively new member of the Rackspace team, but he’s a veteran when it comes to channel relations. He was with Extreme Networks for 10 years, part of which he spent as the company’s channel chief, before joining Rackspace in early 2010 as Director and VP of North American Channels. So the real news here is that Rajiah’s role is expanding, not completely changing. He will be replacing Rackspace’s current VP of Worldwide Channel Sales Robert Fuller, who shift over to be Rackspace’s VP of Global Enterprise Solutions.

There is no indication yet whether Rajiah has major changes in mind for the Rackspace Streamlined Channel Program, which includes the company’s cloud computing, managed hosting, e-mail hosting and Rackspace Cloud Drive. The program was created during Fuller’s tenure as channel chief and has since grown the company’s partner base to more than 4,500 companies.

My initial guess would be that Rajiah intends to keep the channel program running as is rather than overhaul it. Why fix something that works? The Rackspace Partner Program is a major reason why Rackspace became a $1 billion company in 2011. But we’ll monitor the change over at the beginning of the year in case serious changes are made.