Here's What Makes AWS A Growing Force In Enterprise IT

Beyond the prospect of moving all IT assets to the cloud, AWS is beckoning enterprises with possibilities in serverless computing, AI, and machine language

- Ed Nair

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s 11 year old subsidiary, is a behemoth in computing that is redefining the rules of enterprise IT. In 2015, Gartner estimated that AWS customers are deploying 10x more infrastructure on AWS than the combined adoption of the next 14 providers. AWS’ glory outpaces that of its parent: in the first quarter of 2016, Amazon experienced a 42% rise in stock value as a result of increased earnings, of which AWS contributed 56% to company’s profit. With a 50% increase in revenues the past few years and a quarterly run-rate of $3 B plus, it is predicted AWS will have $13 billion in revenue in 2017.

Stephen Orban, Head of Enterprise Strategy, AWS was in India to speak at the AWS India Summit early May. Stephen has been the CIO at Dow Jones in his earlier role and much of his ideas are shaped by what he faced in that role. Said Stephen, “I was the CIO at Dow Jones where I led a several big IT - business transformation projects. Cloud was a major part of that. I helped push the strategy for public cloud adoption to create an environment where the company could experiment with a minimal investment. I saw the writing on the wall and realized there is no time like the present to embrace the cloud. So, I moved to AWS.”

MAKING AWS THE GROWING FORCE IN ENTERPRISE IT

Stephen’s role at AWS is to work with enterprise customers to understand the challenges and realities of their existing IT environment that cut across people, process, and technology. He helps them come up with an implementation plan and execution strategy to create a business case for the cloud, align resources and capabilities, and enable different business units to transition to the cloud.