Andy Jassy, brains behind AWS, to take over as Amazon CEO

UPDATE: May 27, 2021: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos will step down July 5, Bezos announced Wednesday during the company's annual shareholder meeting. The date marks the 27th anniversary of when Amazon was incorporated.

Bezos is leaving to serve as Amazon's executive chair, making way for AWS CEO Andy Jassy to lead the company.

Dive Brief:

Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy will take over as Amazon CEO in the third quarter this year, succeeding Jeff Bezos, the company announced Tuesday. Bezos will remain as executive chairman.
Jassy is a long-standing Amazon employee who founded AWS in 2003 and was named CEO of AWS in 2016. He has led the cloud vendor through continued market dominance. AWS commands 45% of worldwide IaaS revenue, generating double the revenue of its next closest competitor in the cloud space, Microsoft.
Last year AWS brought in $45.4 billion in net sales, just 12% of the company's total net sales of $386 billion. But it stands out in its operating income contributions. In 2020, AWS reported $13.5 billion in operating income increasing from $9.2 billion in 2019, up 47% year-over-year. The segment accounts for 59% of Amazon's total operating income.

Dive Insight:

AWS is the unparalleled juggernaut in the cloud arena, defining the industry and establishing a breakneck pace for innovation that other vendors struggle to match. It also set the tone for what vendors a company adopts.

Its longstanding place in the market has also reshaped the cloud labor market. AWS certifications are profitable for those credentialed and more four-year colleges are turning to Amazon to establish cloud computing degrees.

The company is also on a training bent, working to offer free training, certifications and programs to 29 million people by 2025.

Even without Jassy as its head, AWS will continue its growth — dominance — trajectory. Its enterprise business allowed Amazon to build a foundation and reputation for innovations; it remains bread and butter. That bodes well for Amazon, a company meticulous in determining what's next.

The company has some indications where part of its focus may lie. Amazon chose Arlington, Virginia as the location of its second headquarters (mockups of the new campus were released Tuesday), a stone's throw away from the nation's capital.

AWS is a lead vendor for the U.S. government, and though it lost the $10 billion Department of Defense contract award to Microsoft, it remains a key vendor for computing workloads in the federal arena.

Though Amazon did not yet name the replacement for AWS CEO, the company will task the new leader with keeping the cloud competition at bay and extending further into the vertical-specific cloud markets.