In conjunction with today’s planned announcement of online buying platform Amazon’s quarterly financial performance, business media to lit-up with the headline that Founder Jeff Bezos will be stepping down as CEO in the third quarter of this year.
The company announced this afternoon that Bezos will be turning over the helm to the company’s top AWS Cloud executive Andy Jassy. Bezos will transition to his role as Executive Chairman of Amazon’s board.
In a statement within Amazon’s financial performance results published this afternoon, Bezos Indicated:
“Amazon is what it is because of invention. We do crazy things together and then make them normal. We pioneered customer reviews, 1-Click, personalized recommendations, Prime’s insanely-fast shipping, Just Walk Out shopping, the Climate Pledge, Kindle, Alexa, marketplace, infrastructure cloud computing, Career Choice, and much more.
If you do it right, a few years after a surprising invention, the new thing has become normal. People yawn. That yawn is the greatest compliment an inventor can receive. When you look at our financial results, what you’re actually seeing are the long-run cumulative results of invention. Right now I see Amazon at its most inventive ever, making it an optimal time for this transition.”
Jassy, after joining Amazon in 1997 has led the AWS Cloud infrastructure and compute service division ever since, making the business unit the most profitable of all the company’s business units. Reportedly, upwards of 52 percent of the provider’s operating income in the most recent quarter stems from the AWS tech unit.
Today’s financial report is already being billed as Amazon’s first $100 billion quarter, a mind-boggling milestone. It further reflects the online providers ability to once again take maximum advantage of the “perfect storm” of increased COVID-19 infection rates leading to a continued acceleration of online buying activity as well as the provider’s ever expanding global logistics and customer last-mile fulfillment capabilities.
This is obviously breaking news, with many implications.
The implications of senior technology executive taking on a massive online retail, global hosted seller and customer physical logistics fulfillment business has its own byline as well as any other executive leadership moves in the months to come as Jassy takes the reigns. The again, this may be a sign of added technology led initiatives leading the growth of online retail.
Stay tuned for added Supply Chain Matters perspectives.
Bob Ferrari
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