Andy Jassy of AWS Is Movin' On Up: Partners React
Find out what some of your peers and suppliers have to say about Jassy becoming Amazon CEO.
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Channel partners’ general thoughts on Jassy leaving AWS to become CEO of Amazon …
Jamie Lee, chief revenue officer at managed service provider InterVision, an AWS premier consulting partner:
“Andy Jassy is the obvious choice to take the helm at Amazon. … He singlehandedly took the cloud computing concept to market and built AWS into a global juggernaut. Through this, he has shown leadership qualities that embody innovation, business acumen, competitiveness and a relentless focus on customer satisfaction. He is exactly what Amazon needs.”
JT Giri, CEO and co-founder of nClouds, an AWS premier consulting partner:
“You have to think about how his role as CEO of AWS has prepared him for this new role. Jassy positioned AWS as the definitive cloud platform — the one that everyone else had to beat. He delivered outstanding growth and profit on a fierce playing field with the world’s tech giants. Plus, he has had the opportunity to engage with customers and partners in virtually every industry vertical and business case — providing him a broad and deep business and technical perspective on digital transformation. That’s awesome insight for the new CEO of Amazon.”
More MSP reactions to Jassy moving from AWS CEO to Amazon CEO …
Eran Gil, CEO of managed service provider AllCloud, an AWS premier partner:
“I think this is an extremely positive move for Jassy, AWS and Amazon as a whole. Jassy is an accomplished leader who will take the success he built at AWS and apply it to the bigger Amazon organization. This move emphasizes the importance of AWS as part of the broader Amazon business and we see Jassy building on the leadership of Jeff Bezos to further expand Amazon’s growth in new, innovative areas.”
Michael Elliott, executive director of marketing at managed service provider 2nd Watch, an AWS premier partner:
“It’s the natural progression for someone who has been such a clairvoyant leader to the organization. Andy [and] Werner Vogels have not only anticipated the direction of cloud computing, they have defined the future of cloud.”
Mark Turner, director of cloud business at managed service provider Claranet, a premier AWS consulting partner:
“Jassy’s promotion to Amazon CEO has suddenly turned the spotlight on AWS. It has highlighted the importance of cloud as a business and it has sent a clear message that AWS is the core of Amazon. For the cloud industry, this news is huge.”
Vendor partners’ general thoughts on Jassy leaving AWS to become CEO of Amazon …
Josh Perkins, field CTO at digital transformation vendor AHEAD, an AWS Premier Consulting partner:
“I would say that the move even further solidifies the value of the role that AWS plays in the broader pan-Amazon strategy. It is crucial to its operations and the future of its revenue-generation potential. AWS was born out of Amazon’s own needs, and its commercialization was market-defining. The move makes sense in that Andy’s track record is well-aligned to Jeff’s vision and unflinching commitment to innovation as the focus for the future of the company that he founded.”
Elissa Livingston, senior vice president of growth and strategy at CloudCheckr:
“With Andy Jassy stepping into Amazon’s CEO role, I expect the company to maintain, if not accelerate, an already intense focus on its fast-growing cloud business. The cloud has dominated this past year and it’s clear that Jassy’s elevation to CEO signals Amazon’s belief in investing in its offerings, go-to-market and building an ecosystem around AWS.”
MSPs on what Jassy accomplished that no one else could have …
nCloud’s JT Giri:
“He successfully positioned AWS as the definitive cloud platform. He delivered outstanding growth in market share, revenue and profit. Jassy instilled a culture of listening and responding to customers and partners – which led to new services like EKS, Sagemaker, building commercial-grade database systems like Aurora and DynamoDB, and providing the next-gen of ARM Graviton2 processors to provide better performance at reduced cost. He energized the creation of a partner network to support AWS customers – literally from scratch to now numbering in the tens of thousands.”
AllCloud’s Eran Gil:
“Andy Jassy built AWS from the ground up to become a huge success. He achieved greatness and built something that clearly holds the leadership position in the market, with continued high growth. Jassy achieved all of this while enabling an environment of continuous improvement and continuous innovation throughout AWS.”
2nd Watch’s Michael Elliott:
“Vision. Andy Jassy defined what public cloud could become, and then constantly innovated to far outpace the competition. Most companies lose sight of that continuous innovation; AWS never lost that desire to continue to innovate.”
Claranet’s Mark Turner:
“For me, Jassy’s appointment as Amazon CEO speaks volumes about the importance of Amazon Web Services to the overall business. While most people see Amazon as an online retailer first and foremost, AWS is actually Amazon’s primary profit driver. AWS grew out of selling the IT infrastructure that Amazon designed to help sell books online; the services that Amazon needed as a retailer also met a growing need in the wider industry for web-scale application infrastructure. Today, AWS is a behemoth of the cloud space.”
AWS vendor partners on Jassy’s accomplishments …
CloudCheckr’s Elissa Livingston:
“During his time as head of AWS over nearly two decades, Andy Jassy did an amazing job evangelizing cloud computing and playing a massive role in building the market from the ground up. It’s hard to envision public cloud being any bigger than it is today or having a brighter future without AWS’ vision and presence. Customers, partners and competitors alike have Jassy to thank for much of that.”
Peter Scott, senior vice president of business development at WANdisco, which enables self-service migration to the cloud:
“Under Jassy’s leadership, AWS prioritized data migration to the AWS cloud for platforms like Amazon EMR, Amazon Athena and Amazon Glue. AWS recognized that data inconsistencies and downtime are unacceptable to their enterprise customers who are modernizing their business-critical, on-premises data lakes and moving applications to the cloud.”
MSPs on what they accomplished with Jassy as AWS CEO that might not have otherwise happened …
nCloud’s JT Giri:
“Jassy created trust in the AWS brand – in the technical innovation, the commitment to customers and partners, to market growth and momentum – that allowed us to confidently build a business model and associated growth that is all-in on AWS.”
AllCloud’s Eran Gil:
“AllCloud certainly has benefited from the explosive growth AWS has experienced over the past several years. Andy established a lot of opportunities for a broader ecosystem of AWS, which has enabled an entire set of partners to flourish around the AWS business. The foresight to build out a partner ecosystem early is just one of the many things that separates Jassy from the pack.”
2nd Watch’s Michael Elliott:
“2nd Watch was one of the first true cloud-native partners for AWS, enabling large enterprises to migrate to the cloud. Andy Jassy recognized the importance of a strong partner network to enable large enterprises to migrate to the cloud.”
On whether Jassy will keep advocating for the channel as head of Amazon …
AllCloud’s Eran Gil:
“Yes. Jassy understands the merits and value that channel partners bring to the table. He clearly understands that partners bring the multiplier he is looking for to enable high growth and further reach, whether that is through partners developing products on top of the platform or partners helping organizations transition to the platform.”
nCloud’s JT Giri
“Absolutely. He recognizes that the scale of Amazon and AWS requires channel partners. Partners are essential to innovation. Partners are essential to achieving customer obsession. Partners are essential to growth.”
InterVision’s Jamie Lee:
“Andy Jassy understands the value that partners bring to AWS and has put in place a leadership team led by Doug Yeum, head of worldwide channels and alliances at AWS, that will continue this legacy. AWS has invested aggressively in channel programs and incentives that fueled our growth and created long-term opportunities with AWS. I am confident that in his new role, Jassy will remain a strong advocate for AWS and its partner ecosystem.”
2nd Watch’s Michael Elliott:
“I’ve seen a lot of other organizations believe that they can go alone without a strong channel. And most of those organizations recognized the error in that thinking, and had to work hard to rebuild their channel. Andy Jassy is strategic enough to have seen where this has hurt companies in the past, and not replicate those mistakes.”
CloudCheckr’s Elissa Livingston:
“The concept of vibrant ecosystems is embedded in Amazon’s core business and Jassy has always been an advocate for channel partners. This will continue with Jassy at the helm of Amazon.”
MSPs on who they hope will fill Jassy’s AWS CEO role …
nCloud’s JT Giri:
“Because culture is so important at AWS, I suspect it will be someone from inside AWS and their circle of top executives, the S-team. From day 1 with AWS, the AWS partner and product teams have listened to our feedback. They are quick to incorporate feedback and take action. The partner team genuinely wants partners to succeed – there is authenticity in their engagement and motions that is energizing. The AWS culture is unique and special. We hope and expect the culture will continue to thrive under new AWS leadership, and that Amazon as a whole will benefit greatly from the leader who championed that culture.”
AllCloud’s Eran Gil:
“I hope Jassy’s successor is someone who has a similar outlook; who continues to place importance on the channel; who shares his vision of continuous growth and continuous innovation, and someone who further enables the channel and alliances community at the forefront of growth. … [Jassy] has created a focus around channels and alliances that many others in Jassy’s position would not have done. Of course he did this all while hyperscaling one of the most successful businesses in the world.”
2nd Watch’s Michael Elliott:
“I’m confident that whoever fills his role will bring the knowledge and learning from his success forward.”
MSPs on who they hope will fill Jassy’s AWS CEO role …
nCloud’s JT Giri:
“Because culture is so important at AWS, I suspect it will be someone from inside AWS and their circle of top executives, the S-team. From day 1 with AWS, the AWS partner and product teams have listened to our feedback. They are quick to incorporate feedback and take action. The partner team genuinely wants partners to succeed – there is authenticity in their engagement and motions that is energizing. The AWS culture is unique and special. We hope and expect the culture will continue to thrive under new AWS leadership, and that Amazon as a whole will benefit greatly from the leader who championed that culture.”
AllCloud’s Eran Gil:
“I hope Jassy’s successor is someone who has a similar outlook; who continues to place importance on the channel; who shares his vision of continuous growth and continuous innovation, and someone who further enables the channel and alliances community at the forefront of growth. … [Jassy] has created a focus around channels and alliances that many others in Jassy’s position would not have done. Of course he did this all while hyperscaling one of the most successful businesses in the world.”
2nd Watch’s Michael Elliott:
“I’m confident that whoever fills his role will bring the knowledge and learning from his success forward.”
Early this month, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos surprised the world with the announcement that he will vacate his role in the third quarter. Bezos then named Amazon Web Services (AWS) CEO Andy Jassy as his successor.
Jassy has led AWS since 2016. Throughout the intervening years, he turned the division into the world’s largest cloud computing vendor. And Jassy did much of that through the channel, including managed service providers, systems integrators and vendors that sell through partners.
The slideshow above features reactions from a range of AWS channel partners. From their thoughts on Jassy leaving AWS to who they think will succeed him, find out what some of your peers and suppliers have to say.
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