Cuts come about 3 months after the managed hosting and cloud provider went private Credit: Rackspace Instagram Via a blog post by CEO Taylor Rhodes, Texas-based cloud computing company Rackspace announced that it is cutting about 6% of its workforce in areas that have seen slowed growth in recent years. +MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: How Rackspace will stay alive in cloud: Stop competing with Amazon, start partnering + Rhodes says the cuts will primarily be focused on the company’s corporate administrative expenses and management, and that the company’s “front-line” support staff and product teams will be least impacted by the layoffs. Rackspace did not provide additional details about where the cuts will come from or the specific number of employees that would be impacted, saying only they are in areas “where the workforce has grown more rapidly than the revenue.” In September 2016, Rackspace reported that it had 6,115 workers. Six percent of that would be about 366 employees. Fast-growing sectors of the company’s business – notably its Managed Security, Hosted OpenStack and VMware clouds, and Managed Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure public cloud products – will not be cut. “We will continue to invest and build our capabilities in these fast-growing lines of business. We have big ambitions, because the complexity and speed of change our customers are facing as they move into the multi-cloud world have never been higher,” Rhodes wrote in a blog post announcing the layoffs. He called the cuts “painful, necessary and manageable.” The cuts come about three months after Rackspace officially went private. Apollo Global Management announced plans to buy Rackspace in August 2016 for $4.3 billion. That announcement capped off a multi-year period when rumors about the company’s potential sale swirled. Rackspace was founded in 1998 as a managed hosting company, but has progressed to offer its own IaaS public cloud based on OpenStack, to now helping customers use public IaaS cloud platforms. For more about Rackspace’s future strategy, check out an in-depth interview with Rhodes here. MORE: Bloodiest tech industry layoffs of 2016 Related content feature 5 ways to boost server efficiency Right-sizing workloads, upgrading to newer servers, and managing power consumption can help enterprises reach their data center sustainability goals. By Maria Korolov Dec 04, 2023 9 mins Green IT Green IT Green IT news Omdia: AI boosts server spending but unit sales still plunge A rush to build AI capacity using expensive coprocessors is jacking up the prices of servers, says research firm Omdia. By Andy Patrizio Dec 04, 2023 4 mins CPUs and Processors Generative AI Data Center feature What is Ethernet? History, evolution and roadmap The Ethernet protocol connects LANs, WANs, Internet, cloud, IoT devices, Wi-Fi systems into one seamless global communications network. By John Breeden Dec 04, 2023 11 mins Networking news IBM unveils Heron quantum processor and new modular quantum computer IBM also shared its 10-year quantum computing roadmap, which prioritizes improvements in gate operations and error-correction capabilities. By Michael Cooney Dec 04, 2023 5 mins CPUs and Processors CPUs and Processors CPUs and Processors Podcasts Videos Resources Events NEWSLETTERS Newsletter Promo Module Test Description for newsletter promo module. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe