ANDY JASSY IS THE HEAD OF AMAZON’S CLOUD DIVISION

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, has just announced he is handing over his current leadership role as CEO of the company to Andy Jassy, which is to take effect from the third quarter of this year.

57 year-old Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 as an online book store and has since transformed the company into a multi-faceted mega-retailer, delivering products and services ranging from gadgets to groceries, as well delve into the production and delivery of technological products such as Alexa and cloud infrastructure/platform AWS (Amazon Web Services). Amazon surpassed a $1 trillion market cap under his leadership in January of last year and the company now worth over $1.6 trillion.

 “I’m excited to announce that this Q3 I’ll transition to Executive Chair of the Amazon Board and Andy Jassy will become CEO. In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives. Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have. He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence,” said Jeff Bezos in his letter to Amazon employees.

Led by Andy Jassy, AWS boasts of a global cloud Infrastructure offering over 175 fully featured services on it platforms from data centers across the globe. With 24 launched Cloud Regions that feature 77 Availability Zones (geographically separated data centers), AWS serves customers across 245 Countries and Territories. The cloud division has announced the development of additional 6 AWS Regions which will offer 18 more Availability Zones across Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Spain, and Switzerland.

“We are leaders in areas as varied as machine learning and logistics, and if an Amazonian’s idea requires yet another new institutional skill, we’re flexible enough and patient enough to learn it. Keep inventing, and don’t despair when at first the idea looks crazy. Remember to wander. Let curiosity be your compass. It remains Day 1,” Jeff Bezos concludes his letter.

Following this transition, Bezos intends to stay engaged in important Amazon projects but will dedicate more time to focus on the Bezos Earth Fund, his Blue Origin spaceship company, The Washington Post and the Amazon Day 1 Fund.