As if it weren’t already obvious that Amazon.com’s Web services business is a bonafide blockbuster, the company has cemented the reality by elevating its boss’ title.

Andy Jassy’s position will change from senior vice president to chief executive of Amazon Web Services. At the same time, Amazon has given the same CEO title for its Worldwide Consumer business to longtime executive Jeff Wilke, who has been senior vice president of consumer since 2012.

“This is not a reorganization but rather a recognition of the roles they’ve played for a while,” the company said in a blog post Apr. 7. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who retains his title for the overall company, also tweeted his congratulations.

Nonetheless, a CEO title is especially meaningful when it comes Jassy–and not just because it’s vindication for helping create a business most people thought was a crazy idea for a money-losing retailer. It also signifies to customers–and potential customers–that this is a serious, long-term business 10 years after Bezos launched it to widespread skepticism in 2006.

“It sends a strong message to the market and customers about the importance that Amazon places in AWS,” said Brian Gracely, cloud analyst with Wikibon (owned by the same parent company as SiliconANGLE). “Not that anyone questioned AWS longevity, but AWS is now the only major cloud provider with a dedicated CEO.”

The importance of AWS started to become apparent last year when Amazon finally revealed more about the financials of the business. AWS grossed $7.9 billion in revenues last year, up 70 percent from 2014, a growth rate four times as fast as the retail operations. And Bezos, in his Apr. 6 letter to shareholders, said AWS revenues would hit $10 billion this year. Given his customary conservatism on revealing future plans, that may well mean they’ll come in well above that, as some analysts have forecast.

Even more impressive, it has become  Amazon’s new profit engine. Although the unit constitutes only 7 percent of Amazon’s overall revenues, its $1.9 billion in operating profit wasn’t far short of the $2.8 billion operating profit of the entire $99 billion retail business. Macquarie Securities last year valued AWS at $75 billion, close to half the rest of Amazon’s business–which would make it one of the largest “unicorns” out there.

Jassy’s new title is a strong hint that Amazon’s ambitions go beyond what most people know of Amazon Web Services, which provides cloud storage and computing services to a million customers, from startups to a growing roster of large businesses such as Netflix and General Electric. As the appeal of cloud services grows rapidly, Amazon is aiming squarely at capturing a larger chunk not only of spending on enterprise computing–putting it in direct competition with goliaths ranging from IBM to HPE to Cisco.

Bezos more than hinted at this in the shareholder letter when he wrote about “extending our services to offer a range of highly cost-effective options for running just about every type of application or IT use case imaginable.” He couldn’t help adding, in reference to an AWS service that alerts customers when their usage indicates they could save money: “I’m pretty sure we’re the only IT vendor telling customers how to stop spending money with us.”

In any case, Bezos clearly considers AWS a major leg of an apparent plan to try to dominate not only the delivery of physical goods, but also the delivery of digital goods. Appointing a CEO of AWS might suggest that Bezos could spin off the operation, as some investors have suggested. But he has shown no inclination to do so.

Indeed, in his shareholder letter, Bezos sought to explain how a seemingly unrelated business actually fits well into the rest of the company:

We could have stuck to the knitting. I’m glad we didn’t. Or did we? Maybe the knitting has as much to do with our approach as the arena.

Explicit in that approach is Bezos’ vow that AWS will continue to be aggressive:

As the team continues their rapid pace of innovation, we’ll offer more and more capabilities to let builders build unfettered, it will get easier and easier to collect, store and analyze data, we’ll continue to add more geographic locations, and we’ll continue to see growth in mobile and “connected” device applications. Over time, it’s likely that most companies will choose not to run their own data centers, opting for the cloud instead.

Not least, at a time when competition for cloud talent is fierce, Jassy’s elevation in title opens up the potential to cultivate or attract talent further down in the organization. “It opens up new leadership opportunities at AWS under Jassy,” said Gracely.

SiliconANGLE photo