Rackspace Inc. has ended its hunt for a new chief executive officer, appointing industry stalwart Joe Eazor into the role.

Eazor (pictured) replaces previous CEO Taylor Rhodes, who resigned earlier this month, and will begin his new job on June 12 when he takes over from interim CEO and current President Jeff Cotton.

In a statement, Rackspace said that as CEO, Eazor will head up the company’s global strategy and operations spanning the U.S. and three other continents where it operates data centers and offices.

“Joe has had a long and successful career growing IT [information technology] services businesses,” David Sambur, senior partner at Apollo Global Management and chairman of the Rackspace board of directors, said in a news release. “He has a proven reputation for driving investment and allocation of resources to the areas that will generate the best returns. Joe has led large and complex organizations.”

Fifty-four year-old Eazor joins Rackspace having previously served as CEO of EarthLink, an Internet service provider that also offers cloud-based networking services. Under Eazor’s leadership, EarthLink was named as one of the top 100 Most Trustworthy Companies in America by Forbes in 2016. He also oversaw the sale of the company to managed services and data network communications firm Windstream Holdings, Inc. last February for $1.1 billion.

The appointment comes after Rackspace itself was acquired late last year by the New York-based private equity firm Apollo Global Management LLC for $4.3 billion.

“As soon as the call came about Rackspace, I knew that was where I wanted to go,” Eazor said in a statement. “I know the company. I’ve visited the headquarters and felt the spirit there, and watched Rackers at work. My goal here is to build on that foundation and make us the world’s preeminent IT-services company.”

Before heading up EarthLink, Eazor carved out a reputation as a top executive at EMC Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Electronic Data Systems Corp. Eazor also led the integration of EDS following its $13.9 billion acquisition by HP in 2008.

“All of us feel that Joe will be a great culture fit, as well as a very effective CEO,” said Rackspace President Cotton, who worked with Eazor at EDS almost a decade ago. “Joe brings deep IT services experience, and strong leadership qualities.”

Following its acquisition by Apollo, Rackspace now has the freedom to carve out a new future for itself in a cloud market that’s dominated by its former rival Amazon Web Services Inc. That future seems to be laser-focused on providing managed services for public cloud companies like AWS, as well as Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. The company will also continue its focus on OpenStack private clouds. Most recently, Rackspace sealed a deal with Google to become its first managed services support partner.

There’s also some news about Rackspace’s ex-CEO Taylor Rhodes, who quit the company earlier this month to become CEO of an unnamed startup. That startup was revealed to be SMS Assist LLC, a Chicago-based supplier of cloud-based property management software.

Photo: Rackspace