Something happened at Rackable between last Thursday when Rackable president Todd Ford was ousted and CEO Tom Barton took over his job and Monday morning when Barton himself was tossed out on his ear and replaced as president and CEO by Rackable board member Mark Barrenechea, late of Garnett & Helfrich, CA and Oracle.

According to Rackable chairman Ron Verdoorn, Rackable decided that Barton wasn't the boy to take the company - which Dell has been undercutting in its three main accounts and so lost money in Q1 - well, he wasn't the boy "to take Rackable to the next level." Barrenechea, of course, sports big company scars; he reported directly to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.

Barrenechea, in turn, says that Rackable "requires a more actionable execution plan." It's "not competing enough"; its footprint in the market is too narrow. Its distribution strategy is weak and needs to add channels and OEMs to its direct sales. It's limited to North America and should elbow into Europe and the BRIC countries.

Rackable's "management team" page looks like this now

Last week Barton said the company's dependence on Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon was the "key factor affecting our performance."

Barrenechea said Rackable needs to hire ahead of an expansion in its business - (Barrenechea is used to managing thousands of people; Rackable has less than 300) and it needs to innovate more - but it also doesn't need to build its boxes out of every known component in the Valley. Nope, it needs to standardize its product lines although it's going ahead with the business model trotted out last week, to wit, configure to order. Barrenechea also want to expand Rackable's investment in its storage side, which currently brings in about 12% of its revenues.

He did not address what has seemed like Rackable's problems since it pre-announced in early April and that would be competitive pricing and margins or Barton's determination to walk away from unprofitable business.

Barrenechea has been on Rackable's board for the last six months. He's not yet ready to think about selling it, he said, but he would consider licensing its IP.

After the announcement, Rackable's stock, which crashed some time ago although it set a new low last week when it lost $10.2 million on revenues down 15% to $72 million, inched forward. Its market cap is now around $336 million.

There's been some talk that Rackable's fortunes faded with the waning of AMD's popularity since it was a big Opteron backer.

Barton also resigned from Rackable's board. He was CEO since December 2002.