A top executive at Rackspace Technology Inc. is leaving the company while a board member resigned this month.
The changes come as the San Antonio cloud-computing company has been at the center of a recent ransomware attack — though the departures are not related to the incident — and as it plans to roll out a new business plan early in the new year.
The departure of Holly Windham — the company’s executive vice president, chief legal and chief people officer, and corporate secretary — was announced in a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Plans called for her to relinquish her role as chief people officer last week while remaining as chief legal officer until the position is filled and no later than Feb. 28.
Board member Tim Campos, who is CEO of software development firm Woven, had notified the company on Dec. 12 that he would resign effective immediately, according to SEC filings. He has been named chief information officer for Apple Inc.
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The high-level departures came as Rackspace entered its third week of battling against a ransomware attack that occurred Dec. 2 and crippled certain services.
In an email, Rackspace’s chief marketing officer, Casey Shilling, said the moves involving Windham and Campos are “wholly unrelated to the recent ransomware incident.”
“Windham will be leaving the company to pursue another opportunity,” Shilling said, noting that the roles of chief legal and chief people officer will be split and that searches to fill both positions are ongoing.
Campos’ resignation from the board, meanwhile, “is due to demands on his time related to the new role and to avoid any potential future conflicts of interests,” Shilling said.
Internal shakeup
Rackspace, the largest tech company in San Antonio, has reported revenue increases for 12 straight quarters, even as its net losses widened. Its stock price has fallen about 80 percent since January. At market close on Wednesday, the company’s shares were trading at $2.84, down from about $4.80 on the day of the ransomware attack.
Amid financial struggles, the company earlier this year said it chose not to sell itself, but rather pursue restructuring plans, which include realigning itself into separate business units for private and public clouds.
In September, Rackspace announced that Amar Maletira, the company’s president and chief financial officer, would immediately replace Kevin Jones as CEO. The company said Jones, who led it since April 2019, would move into a position with New York-based Apollo Global Management, the company’s largest shareholder.
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The internal shakeups drew speculation from local business leaders about what the future holds for largest tech company in San Antonio, which employs about 7,000 workers known as Rackers.
Then, in October, Rackspace announced it was leaving its longtime headquarters in Windcrest — known in tech circles as The Castle. The company said it is putting the 1.2 million-square-foot main office up for sale and downsizing to 75,000 to 90,000 square feet of office space on the far North Side.
In early November, Rackspace said it named Shashank Samant as lead director of its board. Samant, who has been on the company’s board since October 2021, would also serve as an adviser to Apollo. He agreed to invest $2.5 million in the company’s stock.
Also last month, Rackspace named Bobby Molu to be its next chief financial officer, taking over that role from Maletira. Molu, CFO of international markets at Mastercard, was set to begin on Jan. 16, 2023.
In the wake of a ransomware attack, Rackspace earlier this month reported it would split the chief legal officer and chief people roles “as part of organizational alignment,” according to an SEC filing.
Restoring access to data
Rackspace said this week that it’s continuing to “make progress” on restoring Exchange customers’ access to data, including email accounts, contacts and calendars.
“We also continue to test the process for efficiency and speed as email data becomes available for handoff,” Shilling said Tuesday. “We expected to begin restoring data to customers at scale in the coming days.”
Most affected customers and users have migrated to Microsoft 365.
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Rackspace’s chief product officer, Josh Prewitt, has said the company had not determined whether it will exit the hosted Exchange business, which generated about $30 million in annual revenue, or 1 percent of the total annual revenue.
Much remains unknown about the ransomware attack. The company has not specifically identified the attackers, disclosed what they were seeking or said whether the company is paying a ransom to retrieve access to data. Also unclear is how the attackers gained access to Rackspace’s servers.
Rackspace has said it notified the FBI of the breach and is cooperating with the agency in its investigation. The FBI has declined to confirm or deny that it is investigating.
Rackspace also said it hired Austin-based cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike to help conduct an internal forensic investigation. Earlier, Rackspace said CrowdStrike had determined that the breach is isolated to the Exchange server and that no other products or customers were affected.
Last week, an outside adviser to Rackspace said the company identified the culprit only as “a criminal, financially motivated group — a known ransomware group.”
Rackspace executives missed their deadline of completing the internal investigation by the end of last week and declined to set a new target date.
eric.killelea@express-news.net