The next CEO of Amazon’s cloud business is…

aws logo

Amazon has hired a former company executive to run its highly lucrative cloud-computing business, Amazon Web Services.

The online giant has chosen Adam Selipsky, currently CEO of Tableau, a Salesforce-owned data-visualization software maker, as the next chief executive of Amazon Web Services. He will succeed Andy Jassy, who will become CEO of Amazon when Jeff Bezos steps down in the third quarter.

Selipsky is not a new face to Amazon: He was one of the first VPs hired in AWS, and ran the unit’s sales, marketing, and support for 11 years as well as some other areas. He became CEO of Tableau in 2016. Under his leadership, Tableau transitioned through a fundamental business model change, moving from perpetual licenses to subscription licensing. The company was acquired by Salesforce in 2019 in one of the largest software acquisitions in history. 

Selipsky will return to AWS on May 17. He will spend the following several weeks in transition with Jassy before making the change sometime in the third quarter. 

“Adam brings strong judgment, customer obsession, team building, demand generation, and CEO experience to an already very strong AWS leadership team,” said Jassy in an email to employees. “And, having been in such a senior role at AWS for 11 years, he knows our culture and business well.”

Jassy noted that with a $51 billion revenue run rate that’s growing 28% year-over-year (as was reported in Amazon fourth-quarter financials), AWS “is still in the very early stages of what’s possible.”

“Less than 5% of the global IT spend is in the cloud at this point,” he said. “That’s going to substantially change in the coming years.”

X
This ad will auto-close in 10 seconds