Rackable president ousted after two days

Ejector Board seat

By Austin Modine in Mountain View • Get more from this author

Posted in Servers, 30th April 2007 21:05 GMT

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Tom Barton got to play king for a day — or two days, as it were — reigning over Rackable systems as CEO and President over the entire weekend before being offed completely.

The storage and server maker listed a Q1 revenue drop of 15 per cent Friday, and replaced its previous year $6m profit with a $10m loss.

With the news, Rackable's then-president (now twice removed) Tom Ford was shuffled to an EVP post and CEO Barton regained the president title.

Hopefully, he cherished those precious moments. Today Barton announced his resignation. He will be replaced by board member Mark Barrenechea as Rackable's president and CEO. In what suggests the fallout of a board dispute, Barton has also resigned from his position on the board of directors.

Barrenechea held senior management and operating positions at Oracle, and joined Rackable's board in November.

Barton was very optimistic about the company last year, as you can read in a Register interview here. On Friday, Barton spoke of diversifying Rackable's business model in the company's earnings report, but using the power of hindsight [which will appear in brackets] his true meaning becomes apparent:

"We are encouraged by the progress we've made over the past thirty days in assessing our long-term business model," Barton said. "These steps include a newly-defined [Barton-less] plan for handling business at our largest accounts, a strategy [that's one Barton short] for diversifying our sources of revenue, and a focus on higher gross margin products [while yielding significantly smaller gross margins of Barton]." ®

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