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Gajen Kandiah is the new chief executive officer of Rackspace Technology. The announcement was made on Tuesday by the board of directors of the global provider of hybrid cloud and Artificial Intelligence solutions.
Kandiah will succeed Amar Maletira, the previous CEO who had been in that role for the last two years. Maletira will stay with the company to serve as the vice chairman of the board.
Chairman of the Rackspace board, Jeffrey Benjamin, said in a statement on the Rackspace website that Kandiah “is a proven operator across services, infrastructure, software and AI.” He added that his “experience aligns with our strategy to deliver secure and governed multicloud solutions with stronger reliability, security and time to value.”
The statement also noted Kandiah’s experience with bringing "depth across services, infrastructure, software, and AI.”
Kandiah was president and COO of Hitachi Digital. While there, “he integrated AI across industrial and enterprise portfolios." He also had leadership roles with Hitachi Vantara and Cognizant—where he spent some 16 years and grew the business from $360 million to over $16 billion.
Kandiah also provided a statement on the Rackspace website. “I am honored to lead Rackspace Technology and its exceptional team of Rackers,” he said. “What draws me most is the Racker culture and our unwavering dedication to customer success.”
“It’s exciting to lead an organization that gives customers real choice while simplifying how workloads are managed and protected," added Kandiah.
The appointment of Kandiah comes amid a series of financial losses at Rackspace. The San Antonio company known for its innovation in the early days of cloud computing has struggled in recent years as it works to incorporate more Artificial Intelligence into its business model.
Rackspace provided other insights on what the company can accomplish under Kandiah’s leadership: “Rackspace will advance its AI-first multicloud strategy by designing, building and operating governed multicloud operations for AI and data workloads across private, public and sovereign clouds with hyperscalers, regional cloud partners and the open ecosystem.”
