Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 47 | Page 46

CIO opinion CIO OPINION “ LOWERING THE BARRIER TO CONSUME THESE NEW SERVICES WILL ENABLE OUR CUSTOMERS TO ACCELERATE THEIR VALUE TO THE CLOUD AND ENSURE THAT THEY HAVE THE RIGHT SUPPORT WHEN EMBARKING ON MORE COMPLEX TASKS. cloud players – we take a wholly unbiased approach to cloud migration, so our customers know that we are advising them to take the cloud platform that will achieve the best outcome for each project. The company recently underwent a strategy and brand shift towards becoming a technology services company. How does this new strategy reflect changing customer demands? Our recent rebrand has really been a shift to thematically underpin what we’ve known for a long-time. It is the secret of our success: we put the customer first. We wanted to bring to the fore our philosophy that places both customers and trust at the core of our business. We want our customers to understand and celebrate that no matter who they engage with at Rackspace – whether that’s a technical specialist, customer service agent or the billing team – they will have a fanatical experience centred around enabling their success. It also reflects the 46 INTELLIGENTCIO massively diversified services that our customers are now demanding from us as they look for guidance in areas that Rackspace isn’t historically known for, such as our Rackspace Application Services (RAS) that have been built out through the two recent acquisitions of Relation Edge and TriCore. Ultimately, IT environments are getting harder and there is no way for CIOs and IT Directors to be experts in every new enterprise technology and understand how it can be best applied to their business. Our customers continually look to us – and challenge us – to support them in closing the gap between the complex reality that is their IT environment today and what can be achieved tomorrow through new technologies and practices. Part of our rebrand is celebrating the ability of the Rackspace professional services team in supporting our customers throughout their Digital Transformation journey, whether that’s cloud migration, introducing DevOps practices or application management. However, it’s not all change. As part of the rebrand, we have retained and refocused on what we know is most important for our customers – accelerating the value of the cloud. Cloud migration remains a ‘critical’ or ‘high priority’ business initiative for most business leaders, but the challenges of predicting costs, execution complexity and delivering on the vision remains a challenge. Where our strategy hasn’t shifted with the rebrand is our dedication to ensuring that we support our customers throughout their cloud journey and help them continually optimise their estates to ensure that they continue to drive value. n www.intelligentcio.com