Amazon names Adam Selipsky as new AWS head

Selipsky replaces long-time AWS executive Andy Jassy who will become Amazon CEO when founder Jeff Bezos steps down later this year.

"Selipsky brings strong judgment, customer obsession, team building, demand generation, and CEO experience to an already very strong AWS leadership team. And, having been in such a senior role at AWS for 11 years, he knows our culture and business well," Jassy said in a statement late on Tuesday.

After spending 10 years at AWS, Selipsky ran the startup Tableau, which is now part of Salesforce which acquired it for $15.7 billion deal in 2019.

Jassy said that with a $51 billion revenue run rate that's growing 28 per cent (on-year), it's easy to forget that AWS is still in the very early stages of what's possible.

"Less than 5 per cent of the global IT spend is in the cloud at this point. That's going to substantially change in the coming years. We have a lot more to invent for customers, and we have a very strong leadership team and group of builders to go make it happen," Jassy noted.

Selipsky will return to AWS on May 17.

Back in 2005, he was one of the first VPs Amazon hired in AWS, and ran sales, marketing, and support for 11.

Selipsky then became the CEO of Tableau in 2016, and ran Tableau for 4.5 years.

Tableau experienced significant success during Adam's time as CEO — the value of the company quadrupled in just a few years, Tableau transitioned through a fundamental business model change from perpetual licenses to subscription licensing, and the company was eventually acquired by Salesforce in 2019 in one of the largest software acquisitions in history.

Following the acquisition, Adam remained the CEO of Tableau and was a member of Salesforce's Executive Leadership Team.