AWS is quite a story. It started as an experiment almost 20 years ago with Amazon trying to sell its excess server capacity. And people really doubted it. Why was the online bookstore trying to sell cloud services? But now, AWS is the largest cloud services provider in the world, and it’s the most profitable segment of Amazon, generating more than $22 billion in sales last quarter alone. By some estimates, AWS powers roughly one-third of the entire global internet. And on the rare occasion an AWS cluster goes down, an unfathomable number of platforms, websites, and services feel it, and so do hundreds of millions of users.

Adam Selipsky was there almost from the start: he joined in 2005 and became CEO of AWS in 2019 when former AWS CEO Andy Jassy took over for Jeff Bezos as CEO of Amazon. Even with big competitors such as Microsoft and Google gaining ground, he estimates that only 10 percent of his potential customers overall have made the jump to the cloud. 

That leaves lots of room to grow, and I wanted to know where he thinks that growth can come from — and importantly, what will keep AWS competitive as the word “cloud” starts to mean everything and nothing.

AWS is going big on AI, but it has some challenges. Adam and I got into all of it and into the weeds of what it means to be an AI provider at scale. It’s uncharted territory.

Links:
Big Three Dominate the Global Cloud Market
Amazon’s server outage broke fast food apps like McDonald’s and Taco Bell
Amazon names former exec Adam Selipsky as the new head of AWS
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