The People With Power at Amazon Web Services

Since Amazon stumbled into the cloud computing business 13 years ago, its Amazon Web Services division has soared to more than $25 billion in annual sales, accounting for nearly 59% of the internet retailer’s operating income. In contrast, it has taken Salesforce—no slouch in the cloud computing business—nearly two decades to reach just $13 billion in annual revenue.

But the rise of AWS, as the unit is commonly known, has also brought with it growing pains of the sort that other big software companies such as Microsoft have experienced. Earlier this year, AWS shuffled the senior leadership of its sales team to clarify roles and eliminate confusion that occurred when multiple salespeople pitched the same customers, according to two people with direct knowledge of the changes.

Those and other previously unreported changes are reflected in the organizational chart (see above) that provides an unprecedented view of the top 220 managers at AWS, who collectively oversee thousands of employees at the unit.