6 AWS Execs Who Left In 2024 (So Far) For Microsoft, Google, Cisco And Others

CRN breaks down six of the most significant AWS executives who left the cloud giant in 2024 and where they landed, including at Microsoft, Oracle and NetApp.

Several of AWS’ top executives have departed the company so far in 2024 to join fellow cloud, AI and storage rivals including Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle and NetApp.

This includes former AWS vice presidents, managing directors, engineering heads and others who left this year to take top roles at other tech giants.

CRN breaks down six AWS executives who left the world’s largest cloud company in 2024 and where they landed.

AWS’ $97 Billion Run Rate

Before jumping into the six executives who left, it’s key to note that Seattle-based AWS is the world’s No. 1 cloud market leading—owning 31 percent share of the global cloud infrastructure services market.

AWS is currently at a $97 billion annual run rate after generating $24.2 billion in revenue during fourth quarter 2023. AWS’ parent company Amazon has a market cap of $1.87 trillion.

Many of the executives who left AWS this year have joined fellow IT cloud giants like Microsoft, Google Cloud and Oracle.

In terms of global cloud market share: Microsoft ranks No. 2 at 24 percent share, followed by Google at No. 3 with 11 percent share, while Oracle currently owns approximately 2 percent share.

Here are six now-former top AWS executives who left in 2024 that partners, investors and customers should know about.

Ahmed Shihab

Former AWS Role: Vice President of Infrastructure Hardware

New Role: Microsoft, Corporate Vice President at Azure Storage

Ahmed Shihab was responsible for the innovation, building and operations of all of AWS’ storage and compute systems.

He spent about eight years at AWS from 2016 to 2024.

Shihab recently became corporate vice president of Azure Storage at Microsoft. On LinkedIn, he said he’s now “building out world class storage services [at Azure].”

AWS and Microsoft Azure compete heavily in the cloud storage market. Shihab has also held top executive positions for the likes of storage giant NetApp and cloud provider Xyratex.

Ashish Dhawan

Former AWS Role: Managing Director, Worldwide Head of Sales, Enterprise Workloads

New Role: NetApp, Senior Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer, Cloud Business Unit

Ashish Dhawan was AWS enterprise workload business leader for years, tasked with helping large AWS customers migrate their infrastructure and modernize their applications.

He spent over five years at AWS, most recently as was AWS’ managing director and worldwide head of enterprise workload sales.

He left AWS to join NetApp this year to lead the company’s cloud sales strategy. NetApp said Dhawan’s role was created to support NetApp’s continue commitment to cloud with Dhawan leading a high-performing sales team.

Prior to AWS, Dhawan was vice president of sales in Asia Pacific at Juniper Networks for over eight years.

Saurabh Gupta

Former AWS Role: Head of Engineering and Product Strategy, AWS Sagemaker

New Role: Cisco, Senior Director of AI/ML, Outshift by Cisco

Saurabh Gupta left AWS this year as head of engineering and product strategy for AWS Sagemaker, the company’s AI and machine learning solution.

Gupta lead global organizations of AWS professionals who are building the foundational capabilities for Amazon SageMaker, which enables customers to build, train and deploy ML models at scale with familiar AWS tools.

This year, Gupta left AWS after four years to join networking kingpin Cisco as its new senior director of AI/ML for its emerging technologies business Outshift. At Cisco, Gupta will be leading generative AI development and productization at Outshift.

Gupta spent over a decade at Microsoft in top engineering positions from 2011 to 2017, as well as three years as a senior engineering manager at Meta for Facebook Ads.

Adolfo Hernandez

Former AWS Role: Vice President, AWS Global Telco Business

New Role: Group CEO at Capita

IT veteran Adolfo Hernandez left AWS this year to become CEO of British outsourcing company Capita.

Hernandez was a prominent AWS figurehead, speaking on stage at various AWS conferences over his three years at the company as vice president of AWS global Telco Business Unit. He helped accelerate digital transformation and cloud migration initiatives for AWS telecommunications clients.

Prior to AWS, Hernandez has held top executive roles for the likes of Alcatel-Lucent, Sun Microsystems, IBM, as well as CEO of former messaging platform Acision.

Nicolas Dubois

Former AWS Role: Enterprise Senior Partner Sales Manager

New Role: Google Cloud, Partner Development Manager

As channel partners continue to be a critical lifeline for vendors and customers, it is key to note some senior partner managers departure from AWS, including Nicolas Dubois.

Dubois spent over seven years in various senior partner sales and partner success manger roles at AWS, most recently he was enterprise senior partner sales manager.

He joined Google Cloud in January as a partner development manager.

Google Cloud and AWS are in constant battle for channel partner mindshare on a global basis.

Kaartik Viswanath

Former AWS Role: Head of Engineering, AWS Config

New Role: Oracle, Vice President of Cloud Customer Connectivity

Kaartik Viswanath was head of engineering for AWS Config, the company’s configuration tool that helps clients assess, audit and evaluate the configurations of IT resources.

Viswanath spent nine years at AWS in various top executive positions including general manager of AWS Client VPN, as well as head of product management for AWS EC2 Networking.

He left AWS in 2024 to join cloud competitor Oracle as vice president of Cloud Customer Connectivity.

The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) competes in the computing market against AWS cloud.