Rackspace is private – please keep giving us info!

Rackspace is a leader in enterprise managed and cloud hosting. It has been a signal vendor for ITCandor, helping me to plot the uptake in the important move away from the do-it-all-yourself style of computing, where (typically large and medium) organisations built datacentres on their own land and filled them with gear, staff and software. In November it was bought by Apollo Global Management and – as a private company – I don’t expect to get much of an on-going commentary from the company on its financial and customer achievements, or on the balance between its managed hosting and cloud business. My Figure shows the steady progress of its revenues by quarter since 2006 as well as its net profits, which have always been positive. I’m hoping to find some on-going information (as I can for ARM from its new owners Softbank), but if not I’ll have to estimate them. For the record (and as an aide memoire for me) it had around 300k customers and 119k servers in its last reported results for Q3 last year.

Business performance information is very important for Rackspace’s customers and prospects of course.