他掌管了亚马逊最大的赚钱机构。现在他面临着一系列新的挑战

When Jeff Bezos decided to give up his role as Amazon's chief executive earlier this year, it prompted the company to name not one but two new CEOs. The first, Andy Jassy, replaced Bezos as CEO of Amazon's sprawling business. The second, Adam Selipsky, was hired in March to fill Jassy's old role as CEO of Amazon's single biggest moneymaker: Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Selipsky was no stranger to AWS. He first joined the Amazon cloud computing division in 2005, before its services were even publicly available. But in 2016, after 11 years with the company, he left. In the five years he was away running data visualization firm Tableau, the business and the industry changed considerably, bringing Selipsky a new set of challenges.

Annual revenue from AWS nearly quadrupled in that time, and the pandemic caused a huge surge in demand for cloud computing and cloud-based services. But the competitive landscape also intensified. While AWS pioneered cloud technology and is the longtime industry leader, rivals like Microsoft (MSFT) Azure and Google (GOOGL GOOGLE) Cloud have stolen some of its market share.

One of the first major hurdles for Selipsky is the battle, especially with Microsoft, for lucrative government cloud services contracts.

In 2019, Microsoft won a contract to modernize the Pentagon's IT infrastructure in a deal worth as much as $10 billion over 10 years, a major blow to AWS, which previously held a deal with the department. The contract was ultimately canceled after Amazon protested that former President Donald Trump had unfairly influenced the deal, but it signaled that AWS may no longer be the obvious choice for such major projects.

Now, both companies are expected to bid — potentially along with others such as Google Cloud and Oracle — for the Defense Department's new Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract to replace the 2019 deal.

But in one of his first interviews since taking over as AWS CEO, Selipsky sounded confident about his company's prospects. The new AWS chief said he believes his company still has an edge over Microsoft in clinching government work.

"We really were the first in the cloud to have big, significant government contracts in every area of government and years before any of the competitors," he told CNN Business in an exclusive interview last week, which took place inside the new AWS Skills Center at the company's headquarters. "We learned a lot about how to do cloud implementations and work very closely with federal government customers," he said.

He added: "I think you'll find, particularly given our leadership position, that our competitors spend a lot more time talking and worrying about AWS than we do about them — we choose to focus on our customers."

(While such contracts are good for business, some employees have previously taken issue with the company's work for certain government agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement — a dynamic that may only add to Selipsky's challenges in the role.)

Selipsky said Amazon never anticipated being the only winner in the cloud. And the industry has certainly gotten large enough to accommodate more than one major player — public cloud spending is expected to reach more than $300 billion this year, according to Gartner estimates from April.

"In any fast growing, interesting market segment, there's going to be competition," he said. "We've always thought there would be not a lot of winners, but a small handful of winners that emerge and have vigorous competition, and that's what we see. But we still are the significant leader."

We 'really encourage' employees speaking up

Shortly after Selipsky took charge of AWS, the business faced a different challenge from within. A group of employees circulated a petition alleging discrimination and harassment of women and minorities in one of the AWS business units, after which the company hired an outside firm to investigate. Similar employee activism has cropped up recently at Apple, Google and video game company Activision Blizzard.

While some companies have appeared to chafe at employee organizing (AWS parent company Amazon has faced criticism for what some see as anti-union efforts), Selipsky said he thinks workers speaking up may ultimately be good for the business.

"I really like the fact that people are bringing their whole selves to work and that they're speaking out — we really encourage that," he said. "I've found that if you have a really good process and really genuinely listen and show people that you're taking the time to listen, even when they disagree with you at the end of the day, we all can lock arms and move forward together."

He continued: "I really welcome the fact that a lot of topics are being discussed today that maybe were discussed less in the workplace five, 10, 20 years ago."

Another growing concern with the cloud industry is that the data centers it relies on are energy intensive. Much of that computing is still reliant on fossil fuels, but Selipsky said AWS is working to change that in keeping with Amazon's larger promise to be net carbon zero across the company by 2040. Amazon's climate pledge was announced in 2019 just ahead of a planned walkout by employees over perceived inaction by the company on climate change.

"Amazon intends to be 100% renewable energy by the year 2025 ... and we're already about two-thirds of the way there, so we're making significant progress," he said. "Just given our size and our scale and the things like the data centers we operate, we really have to drive them with renewable energy in order to hit that [2040] goal. We're doing a lot of innovating ourselves, we're doing a lot of partnering with a lot of companies, a lot of governments, a lot of nonprofits to reach those goals."

Selipsky will have his first chance to address customers at AWS's annual cloud conference, Re:Invent, in Las Vegas later this month. He said customers should expect announcements in some of "our oldest and most basic services, things like compute and databases and storage," as well as "exciting announcements about higher level services and industry specific solutions."

"It's absolutely imperative that we continue to understand [customers'] evolving needs, which are changing very quickly, and we're going to evolve right along with them," he said.

他掌管了亚马逊最大的赚钱机构。现在他面临着一系列新的挑战

今年早些时候，当杰夫·贝佐斯决定放弃亚马逊首席执行官一职时，这促使该公司任命了两位新 CEO，而不是一位。第一个是安迪·贾西（Andy Jassy），他接替贝索斯担任亚马逊庞大业务的首席执行官。第二个是 Adam Selipsky，他在 3 月份被聘用，以填补 Jassy 担任亚马逊最大的单一赚钱机构：亚马逊网络服务 (AWS) 首席执行官的旧职位。

Selipsky 对 AWS 并不陌生。他于 2005 年首次加入亚马逊云计算部门，当时该部门的服务尚未公开。但在 2016 年，在公司工作了 11 年后，他离开了。在他离开经营数据可视化公司 Tableau 的五年里，业务和行业发生了巨大变化，给 Selipsky 带来了一系列新挑战。

在那段时间，AWS 的年收入几乎翻了两番，大流行导致对云计算和基于云的服务的需求激增。但竞争格局也愈演愈烈。虽然 AWS 开创了云技术，并且是长期的行业领导者，但微软 (MSFT) Azure 和谷歌 (GOOGL GOOGLE) Cloud 等竞争对手已经窃取了其部分市场份额。

塞利普斯基面临的首要障碍之一是争夺利润丰厚的政府云服务合同，尤其是与微软的争夺战。

2019 年，微软以 10 年价值高达 100 亿美元的交易赢得了五角大楼 IT 基础设施现代化的合同，这对之前与该部门达成交易的 AWS 造成了重大打击。在亚马逊抗议前总统唐纳德特朗普不公平地影响交易后，该合同最终被取消，但它表明 AWS 可能不再是此类重大项目的明显选择。

现在，预计两家公司都将与谷歌云和甲骨文等公司一起竞标国防部新的联合作战云能力 (JWCC) 合同，以取代 2019 年的交易。

但在接任 AWS 首席执行官后的第一次采访中，Selipsky 听起来对他公司的前景充满信心。这位新的 AWS 负责人表示，他相信他的公司在完成政府工作方面仍然比微软更具优势。

“我们确实是云中第一个在政府的每个领域都拥有大型、重要的政府合同的公司，而且比任何竞争对手都要早几年，”他在上周的一次独家采访中告诉 CNN Business，采访发生在新的 AWS 技能中心内。在公司总部。 “我们学到了很多关于如何进行云实施并与联邦政府客户密切合作的知识，”他说。

他补充说：“我认为你会发现，特别是考虑到我们的领导地位，我们的竞争对手花在谈论和担心 AWS 的时间比我们为他们做的多得多——我们选择专注于我们的客户。”

（虽然此类合同对企业有利，但一些员工此前曾对公司为某些政府机构（包括移民和海关执法局）的工作提出异议——这种动态可能只会增加塞利普斯基在该职位上的挑战。）

塞利普斯基表示，亚马逊从没想过自己会成为云计算领域的唯一赢家。而且这个行业肯定已经变得足够大，可以容纳不止一个主要参与者——根据 Gartner 4 月份的估计，今年公共云支出预计将超过 3000 亿美元。

“在任何快速增长、有趣的细分市场中，都会有竞争，”他说。 “我们一直认为不会有很多赢家，但会出现少数赢家并且竞争激烈，这就是我们所看到的。但我们仍然是重要的领导者。”

我们“非常鼓励”员工畅所欲言

在 Selipsky 接管 AWS 后不久，该业务面临着不同的内部挑战。一群员工散发了一份请愿书，指控 AWS 的一个业务部门歧视和骚扰女性和少数族裔，此后该公司聘请了一家外部公司进行调查。最近，苹果、谷歌和视频游戏公司动视暴雪也出现了类似的员工激进主义。

虽然一些公司似乎对员工组织感到恼火（AWS 母公司亚马逊因一些人认为的反工会行为而受到批评），但塞利普斯基表示，他认为员工的发言最终可能对公司有利。

“我真的很喜欢这样一个事实，即人们全身心投入工作，并且大声疾呼——我们真的鼓励这样做，”他说。 “我发现，如果你有一个非常好的流程，真正真诚地倾听，并向人们表明你正在花时间倾听，即使他们在一天结束时不同意你，我们都可以锁定武器并采取行动一起前进。”

他继续说道：“我非常欢迎今天正在讨论的许多话题，而这些话题在 5、10、20 年前可能在工作场所讨论得较少。”

云行业的另一个日益关注的问题是它所依赖的数据中心是能源密集型的。大部分计算仍然依赖化石燃料，但塞利普斯基表示，AWS 正在努力改变这种状况，以符合亚马逊到 2040 年在整个公司实现净碳零的更大承诺。亚马逊的气候承诺是在计划罢工之前于 2019 年宣布的员工认为公司在气候变化问题上不作为。

“亚马逊打算到 2025 年实现 100% 可再生能源......我们已经完成了大约三分之二的工作，所以我们正在取得重大进展，”他说。 “考虑到我们的规模和规模以及我们运营的数据中心之类的东西，我们真的必须用可再生能源推动它们以实现 [2040] 目标。我们正在做很多创新，我们正在与许多公司、许多政府、许多非营利组织进行了大量合作，以实现这些目标。”

Selipsky 将第一次有机会在本月晚些时候在拉斯维加斯举行的 AWS 年度云会议 Re:Invent 上向客户发表讲话。他说，客户应该期待“我们最古老和最基本的服务，例如计算、数据库和存储”中的一些公告，以及“关于更高级别服务和行业特定解决方案的激动人心的公告”。

“我们必须继续了解 [客户] 不断变化的需求，这些需求变化非常快，我们将与他们一起发展，”他说。