Our Leadership

Duane Barnes initially joined RapidScale (now a Cox Business Company) in 2016 as Director of Solutions Engineering and was charged with building out this team nationwide. By early 2017 Barnes was promoted to SVP of Technology, then to interim-CTO in January of 2020, and then promoted to COO in June of 2020. Barnes currently serves as the General Manager of the cloud and managed services business for Cox Communications, which includes the RapidScale and Logicworks acquisitions. In this role, he is responsible for Operations, Solutions Engineering, Software Engineering, Product Management, Compliance, Sales, Marketing, and Finance.  

Mr. Barnes has over 20 years of experience working in IT focusing on enterprise data center and security services. Prior to his employment with RapidScale, Intelisys, Open-Xchange, and Windstream he held various leadership positions at MPInet, PowerOne Communications, and The Walt Disney Company. His expertise is in Complex Data Center Solutions and Managed Hosting Projects; Cloud Computing, Virtualization, Storage, Cloud Storage, SaaS, Networking, Disaster Recovery, Security, and VoIP. He currently holds numerous industry certifications from Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, CompTIA, HP, and EMC. Mr. Barnes also holds a B.S. in Communications from the University of Phoenix.

Bryan Krieger as a long history of leading software development teams and managing enterprise-scale IT operations teams. He was with Microsoft for 15 years in multiple roles including senior director managing global IT operations teams and principal program manager in the Visual Studio Developer division. Most recently he has been both CTO and CIO in both established and startup SaaS companies.

Bryan first led the software engineering team within RapidScale, building our next-generation products. As of March 2023, he now serves as Chief Technology Officer.

A native of Seattle, Bryan resides with his family in Durham, North Carolina.

Bob Buchanan joined RapidScale in 2017, bringing over 20 years of industry experience and deep expertise in both channel and direct sales to the RapidScale leadership team. Bob was hired due to his track record of building and scaling world-class channel-focused sales organizations in the cloud space, and he is responsible for developing national go-to-market and sales strategies to accelerate RapidScale’s market position as a provider of managed cloud services including Desktop as a Service (DaaS), Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solutions.

Prior to his role at RapidScale, Bob served as Vice President of Channel Sales for TierPoint where he built a sales team and expanded their channel sales and nationwide channel distribution capabilities during a period of rapid expansion through acquisition. Bob joined TierPoint upon their acquisition of Windstream’s data center business unit, where he served as Vice President of Sales responsible for leading their cloud and data center go-to-market strategy within the partner community.

Bob has twice been named to CRN’s prestigious annual list of Channel Chiefs, recognized as a leader in the IT channel space. He earned a bachelor's degree from Western Carolina University and lives in Raleigh with his wife and two children.

As Senior Director, Operations, Claudette LeBlanc is responsible for service delivery, support, project management, compliance, and architecture. Ms. LeBlanc, who began her professional career as a trigonometry teacher, contributes over fifteen years’ experience in a variety of technical industries with particular emphasis on customer operations. Most recently, she was the Director of Global Operations for Stats Perform, a sports tech firm based in London, where she built and led the Business Intelligence & Insights, Operations Learning & Development, and Customer Experience Operations teams. She previously led global strategy and learning functions at both Amplify (first under ownership by News Corporation, then under Laurene Jobs’ Emerson Collective) and Revolution Prep. LeBlanc has earned degrees from both Loyola University New Orleans (in International Business, with a minor in Latin American Studies) and Technological University Dublin (Business Innovation and Digital Transformation) and holds certifications in both instructional design and business intelligence. She lives in the Raleigh area with her son.