Amazon.com, the cloud juggernaut and e-commerce giant, announced Tuesday a major executive transition. It also reported its fourth quarter earnings for fiscal 2020.
In the third quarter 2021, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon 1994, will be retiring to become the Executive Chair of the company’s board of directors. Andy Jassy will take over the reins from Jeff Bezos, an Amazon executive who has been the CEO of the huge Amazon Web Services (AWS), cloud since 2016.
The company made the announcement in its Q4 earnings reports. Bezos stated in a prepared statement that “when you look at our financial results you’re actually seeing the long-run cumulative effects of invention.” “Amazon is at its most creative ever, making this a perfect time for this transition.”
AWS reported $12.7 Billion in revenue for the quarter ended Dec. 31, which was 28% more than the year prior, in line to Wall Street estimates. Full-year revenue was $45.4billion, a 30% increase over fiscal 2019. Operating income for the quarter was $3.6 Billion, an increase of 37% over fiscal 2019.
Although it is still the largest cloud vendor, AWS’ year-over-year growth has been slowing. AWS was historically Amazon’s fastest-growing business sector. In Q4, AWS fell behind both North American and International retail units which grew by 57% each year.
Microsoft, whose Azure cloud business rivals AWS, released its latest quarterly earnings last Wednesday. Microsoft claims that Azure revenue increased 50% over the previous quarter, although the exact dollar amount is not disclosed by the company.
Jassy will inherit Amazon’s business from Bezos at the same time that cloud technology spending is expected to increase due to pandemic-related changes in work environments and acceptance of remote work.
