Amazon appointed Salesforce executive Adam Selipsky to replace Andy Jassy, the longtime head of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the company’s next CEO when founder Jeff Bezos stepped down later this year. Selipsky worked at AWS for more than 10 years, reaching the post of vice president of sales and marketing, before running the startup Tableau, which is now part of Salesforce. Selipsky’s hiring was first reported by CNBC, which published a memo that Jassy sent to Amazon employees on Wednesday announcing the news.
“Adam brings strong judgment, customer obsession, team building, demand generation and CEO experience to an already very strong AWS leadership team. And, having played a senior role at AWS for 11 years, he knows our culture and business well, ”wrote Jassy in the memo. Selipsky joined Salesforce when the cloud computing giant acquired Tableau in a monstrous $ 15.7 billion business in 2019. Selipsky has been on Salesforce’s executive leadership team since as Acting CEO of Tableau.
It was speculated whether Amazon would promote an existing AWS executive to take on the role of Jassy. The eyes were on Matt Garman, who was promoted to the top sales role last year, and Peter DeSantis, general manager of EC2 business at AWS, as potential candidates.
Ultimately, it looks like Jassy chose a former colleague – and someone with an impressive track record helping to propel a midsize software company toward a $ 15 billion takeover – as the best choice for his replacement to manage AWS. Selipsky will return to Amazon in May, when he and Jassy will “transition together” to their new roles before Bezos’ move to executive chairman of the board.
“With a $ 51B revenue execution rate that is growing 28% Y / Y (those were the last numbers for the fourth quarter of 2020 that we publicly share), it’s easy to forget that AWS is still in the early stages of what is possible ”Wrote Jassy in the memo, referring to less than 5 percent of global IT spending occurring in the cloud computing market. “We have a lot more to invent for customers and we have a very strong leadership team and group of builders to make this happen.”