Amazon picks former executive Adam Selipsky to lead cloud unit

Amazon on Tuesday appointed Salesforce executive Adam Selipsky to lead its high-margin cloud computing unit, Amazon Web Services.

The move comes as AWS' current lead Andy Jassy is vacating the role to become the chief executive officer of Amazon, after Jeff Bezos announced his exit in February.

AWS, a key part of Amazon's growth strategy, has raked in record profits for the world's largest online retailer, and counts scores of startups, big corporations and many government agencies among its clients.


Seattle-based Amazon said Selipsky, one of the first VPs hired in AWS in 2005 who ran the cloud computing division's sales, marketing, and support for 11 years, will return to AWS on May 17.

Selipsky became the CEO of Salesforce's Tableau Software unit in 2016, and under his leadership the value of the division quadrupled in just a few years, Amazon said.