Four key ways AWS' new boss could transform the cloud giant for the better

The cloud giant crowned former Tableau boss Adam Selipsky as its new boss yesterday. CRN speaks to Gartner research VP to bring four ways the boss could transform the AWS business

Amazon announced yesterday that Tableau Software CEO Adam Selipsky will be the new CEO of Amazon Web Services.

Former AWS boss Jassy said that Selipsky would bring customer obsession, strong judgement and teambuilding to the AWS business.

With new blood at the top of the world's largest public cloud provider, CRN spoke to Gartner VP Ed Anderson to find out four ways Selipsky could transform the AWS business.

He can make AWS less reliant on infrastructure customers

Selipsky has been opening doors to a set of customers that AWS would never usually meet with during his time as Tableau's chief exec.

Which will be key considering that AWS' ability to expand beyond from its roots as an infrastructure and platform business will be critical over the next few years, said Anderson.

The former Tableau boss will bring new conversations into Amazon around business applications and solutions that sit levels above the infrastructure and help the business to expand what it does into new areas of IT.

"Selipsky knows people that are building business solutions and buying software rather than infrastructure," said Anderson.

"So not only does he have that experience with AWS but he now has an experience meeting with a different kind of customer and solving a different kind of problem which is really really critical for AWS."

"He's been having conversations with people thinking about the role of technology in that light. I do think mashing those two things together - the infrastructure piece then the business solutions piece - is a really healthy perspective for AWS."

AWS needs an outsiders' perspective

While Selipsky has Amazon's culture in his blood, six years away from the Amazon business will hopefully enable him to make some key changes to AWS' strategy.

The AWS business is at an inflexion point, said Anderson. Its competitors are getting stronger on stronger and competitive pressure is mounting. It's going to make it more difficult for AWS to maintain its staggering growth rates they've had in the past.

Microsoft and Google are doing a terrific job of attaching their public cloud business to different business assets. Microsoft has linked up its Azure offering to Microsoft 365 and other traditional datacentre offerings, which are helping it to start new conversations beyond the traditional Azure infrastructure buyer.

Google meanwhile has done a great job of leveraging its strengths in big data management, AI and machine learning to bolster its cloud platform and target specific use cases, explained Anderson.

"You can see how those competitors relative to AWS have really matured in not only their technology capabilities but also their go to market approach which has made them more formidable competitors to AWS," he said.

AWS must now figure out where its next wave of growth will come from.

"Does it come from business applications, which AWS doesn't do much of today? Does it come from strengthening their existing infrastructure and platform offering? Well maybe, but those are some really important decisions that need to be made now and Adam is coming in at a point where those strategies and decisions need to be made."

He has an acumen for efficiency and optimisation

Adam Selipsky has spent the last five years baking optimisation and efficiency into the Tableau Software business.

He pushed the business intelligence vendor towards subscription licencing. In its fourth quarter of 2018, Tableau grew recurring revenues to $841m - 41 per cent higher than they were more than a year ago.

This successful shift to recurring revenues helped Tableau to quadruple its value in the space of just a few years.

Tableau was then sold on to Salesforce in June 2019 for a mouth-watering $15.7bn.

Speaking to CRN, Gartner research VP Ed Anderson said Selipsky will only bring more profitability to the AWS business, which will be vital to Amazon considering the public cloud unit accounts for such a high proportion of its overall profits.

"Selipsky did a pretty masterful job at really streamlining and optimising Tableau's operations. He built a very efficient organisation of course that helped prepare for the sale to Salesforce. So he's clearly demonstrated some great talent in building an efficient and productive organisation," said Anderson.

He knows the Amazon culture

Before moving to head up Tableau in 2016, Selipsky was an Amazon exec through and through. He spent 11 years at the tech giant coordinating its sales, marketing and support for the AWS business.

Amazon is notorious for its powerful, and at times overwhelming business culture. Its 14 leadership principles which involve phrases such as "have a backbone; disagree and commit", "insists on the highest standards" and "deliver results".

While most companies invent such phrases as part of their mission statement, Amazon lives and breathes these principles every single day, said Anderson.

That's why bringing in an outsider who has never worked within Amazon's unique culture was never an option for the top AWS job.

"Adam coming in really understands that culture and it's not just that he has signed up for it, but he understands how all the people in Amazon think and he can predict how they'll act and react to various strategic decisions he'll make. That will give him a jump start; a pure outsider will probably take some time to understand and appreciate and figure out the culture."

Many were surprised that Selipsky was chosen for the job because they strongly expected Amazon to hire from within.

"There were a number of folks internally that I think were considered the frontrunners," said Anderson. "Because a lot of us thought that AWS was going to promote from within, back to my point about the culture".

It's not the first time a high-profile CEO has returned to their previous employer in recent months. Former VMware CEO Pat Gelsigner went back to Intel last month to lead the business.