Meet Andy Jassy, Successor of Jeff Bezos

Amazon, the US multinational technology company, is one of the biggest companies in the world. Major news broke out from the company based in Seattle that CEO Jeff Bezos will be taking over the new role in the organisation. Jess Bezos will become Amazon's executive chairman, hence, vacating his 30-year old position of the CEO. Andy Jassy, the chief of Amazon Web Services (AWS), will be the new CEO from the later part of this year. Who is Andy Jassy and how is he the "chosen one" to handle this humongous empire? Let's find out.

Personal Life

Andy Jassy was born on 13th January 1968. He did his graduation and MBA both from the esteemed Harvard University. His first role after his MBA was that of a project manager for a collectables company. 1997 was a changing year for young Andy. He and a few of his Harvard colleagues joined Amazon. He lives at Capitol Hill neighbourhood of Seattle. A few months back in October, Andy Jassy reportedly bought a $6.7 million house in California.

Unlike many other businessmen, Andy Jassy is quite vocal on his Twitter account. In 2019, the prestigious military's JEDI contract for cloud computing services was awarded to Microsoft and not to Amazon. (JEDI - The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract). Amazon, being one of the biggest cloud computing companies in the world, failed to get the contract which was worth $10 billion. Andy Jassy felt that Amazon was robbed of the contract due to Donald Trump's political influence on the higher authorities. Not only this, he has voiced his opinion against LGBTQ discrimination as well. He came out and pointed out the need for police accountability in support of Breonna Taylor's death, which was a very controversial case in the US.

https://twitter.com/ajassy/status/1309176233117257728

From AWS Chief to the CEO of Amazon

At Amazon, Andy Jassy started as a marketing manager. Soon he and Jeff Bezos moved together to build a cloud computing unit of Amazon. In 2006, Andy founded Amazon's cloud service platform Amazon Web Service (AWS). It was bound to compete with Microsoft Corp's Azure and Alphabet Inc's Google Cloud. Over the years, he has watched Jeff Bezos leading this giant company. On his way to the top, he would have learned from the best mentor available. 

Amazon Web Services is not a mainstream domain for Amazon. Jeff started Amazon as an online book store and transformed it into one of the biggest retail company. Cloud computing has been in huge demand during the Covid-19 pandemic. It offers a replacement to traditional capital infrastructure expenses by bringing a low-cost infrastructure platform in the cloud. 

Under Andy's guidance, AWS has become tech-leader and a prominent name in cloud services. AWS added a whopping $12.7 billion in sales in their fourth quarter of 2021 (October - December). With another brilliant performance in the quarter, AWS became a $50 billion business unit. With all the efforts from Andy and his team, Amazon Web Services has now turned into the most profitable of Amazon’s divisions. In 2020, almost 65% of Amazon's profits have come from this cloud computing domain. According to reports, Amazon Web Services now hold more than one-third of the entire cloud infrastructure market. This market share is more than what Google and Microsoft have under their umbrella.

Conclusion

“It’s really hard to build a business that sustains for a long period of time. To do it, you’re going to reinvent yourself, and often you’re going to have to reinvent yourself many times over.” - Andy Jassy

Andy has seen Amazon's journey of becoming an e-commerce giant. From the retail segment to the hardware maker and then into a major entertainment industry player, Andy has been a part of everything. Meanwhile, he led AWS to success where it is today. With technology being the biggest thing in present and in the future, AWS can take control of Amazon's driving seat.

He is a man who believes in innovation and technology. Both are important from the perspective of business in years to come. It will be interesting to see how he matches or better the success of the billionaire Jeff Bezos. Will also be interesting how he handles business with India, including the ongoing 'war' with Reliance.