Veteran data center executive Douglas Adams has been named chief executive officer of RagingWire, the company said Wednesday. Adams, who had been serving as President, succeeds RagingWire founder George Macricostas, who will become Executive Chairman.
The CEO succession came as RagingWire’s parent company, NTT Communications, announced that it has acquired the remaining shares of RagingWire to take 100 percent ownership of the company.
NTT acquired an 80 percent equity stake in 2014 to establish a larger data center footprint in the United States, with RagingWire’s founders and management team retaining a minority stake.
“In the three years since our investment in RagingWire, we have been extremely pleased with the exceptional performance of the company,” said Tetsuya Shoji, President and CEO of NTT. “RagingWire is strategically important to our ability to deliver global information and communications technology solutions. We are confident that Doug Adams and the RagingWire team will build on this legacy, delivering superior results and contributing significantly to the ongoing success of NTT Communications.”
Adams joined RagingWire in 2001 as part of the early executive team along with Macricostas. During his tenure Adams has led sales, marketing, product, and operations teams. He led RagingWire’s strategic expansion into the wholesale data center solutions space and the building of data center campuses in Sacramento, California, Ashburn, Virginia, and Dallas.
The RagingWire CA3 data center in Sacramento, Calif. (Photo: RagingWire)
Prior to joining RagingWire, Adams was the general manager of the magnetic and optical data storage products division of NEC Technologies, Inc., and held multiple positions in sales, business development, and senior management at Mars, Inc.
“RagingWire is a company with a successful past and an exciting future,” said Adams. “We are proud of our accomplishments and energized by the opportunity in front of us. Our vision and strategy remain the same – we want to be a top five wholesale data center provider in the U.S., and we will build and grow our business in the top data center markets in North America. Together we will take RagingWire to the next level.”
RagingWire was founded in 2000 by Macricostas, who funded and guided the company through two recessions, achieving sustainable growth and ultimately the merger with NTT. Macricostas continued to lead the company for three years during post-merger integration, during which the company has built a data center portfolio of over 1.2 million square feet with 97 megawatts of critical power.
With the financial backing of NTT, RagingWire opened the Sacramento CA3 Data Center and the Ashburn VA2 Data Center totaling 320,000 square feet of space and 28 megawatts of power. In addition, RagingWire began construction on new data center campuses in Dallas and Ashburn.
