Less than three months after her exit from SAP, Amazon has appointed Julia White as its new Chief Marketing Officer and Vice President of Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Prior to her role as the Chief Marketing and Solutions Officer at SAP, White spent nearly 20 years at Microsoft, with her last role as Corporate Vice President responsible for product marketing for Microsoft Azure, Developer Tools, and Platforms. Combined with her three-year stint at SAP in which she focused on cloud and AI messaging, White brings significant experience and expertise to her new role at AWS, also highlighted by AWS CEO Matt Garman who emphasized White’s “extensive experience with cloud, AI, and product messaging and positioning” in a memo to AWS employees. Garman also indicated that White would be joining his leadership team and will succeed Raejeanne Skillern, CMO since July 2023 and whose departure was announced in the same memo.
Although White secured this new role not long after leaving SAP, NICE had announced that they had appointed White’s colleague and executive board member Scott Russell to replace retiring CEO Barak Eilam even before he left SAP. Russell will take over as the chief executive officer of NICE on January 1st, 2025.
While little has been discussed about the former SAP CTO Juergen Mueller since his departure from SAP in September, officials from the Heidelberg Public Prosecutor’s Office have indicated that they are investigating a former manager from a large software company based in the Rhein-Neckar district owing to allegations of sexual misconduct. However, the officials have asserted that it is under investigation and it is unclear if there are sufficient evidence to press charges.
What Does This Mean for ERP Insiders?
While Julia White’s separation from SAP may be a cause of concern for customers using AWS and looking for a continued strong relationship between the companies, this is unlikely to be the case. AWS has been a strong SAP partner for many years and is competing daily with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) for business from SAP customers. Although SAPinsider research finds that more customers are more likely to choose Microsoft Azure as a cloud service provider for SAP S/4HANA and RISE with SAP, Microsoft Azure and AWS are very close when it comes to broader cloud deployments of SAP workloads. Moreover, AWS is much bigger than a single market vertical such as SAP and has surpassed $10 billion in quarterly profits with revenue exceeding $27.4 billion.
However, it has been easy for many large enterprises to extend their existing relationships with Microsoft to include offerings such as the Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Power BI. This has resulted in more significant competition between AWS and Microsoft Azure for the enterprise market, something that White will need to address if AWS hopes to continue to grow revenue and profits in the coming years. White will need to draw more on her experiences at Microsoft in this role than on her tenure at SAP, although SAP’s AI focus may provide some benefits as White’s role will continue to facilitate AI driving AWS growth.
If anything, end users may see a deepening of the relationship between SAP and AWS. This change may be an opportunity for White and her team to establish a closer partnership with SAP, solidifying AWS as a compelling choice for hosting SAP workloads.
ERP Insiders should also remember that AWS is responsible for running a significant portion of the Internet. While White may look to improve AWS’ relationship with SAP, this is only a part of the broader AWS business and that is where her priorities will reside.
