Andy Jassy's Chief Of Staff Replaces Terry Wise As AWS Channel Chief

Doug Yeum, who had been Jassy’s chief of staff since December 2017, has taken over Terry Wise’s role as AWS’ head of worldwide channels and alliances to become its highest-ranking channel executive, the No. 1 cloud provider confirmed exclusively to CRN.

Amazon Web Services’ veteran channel chief of 11 years has been replaced by CEO Andy Jassy’s technical advisor.

Doug (Dong Hoon) Yeum, who had been Jassy’s chief of staff since December 2017, has taken over Terry Wise’s role as AWS’ head of worldwide channels and alliances to become its highest-ranking channel executive, the No. 1 cloud provider confirmed exclusively to CRN.

Wise is now said to be vice president of worldwide partners and U.S. Western region sales for AWS.

[Related: Top Things To Know About AWS’ New Channel Chief]

The changes took effect yesterday, according to an AWS spokeswoman, who declined comment on why the executive shuffle was made. Yeum and Wise could not be reached for comment.

Yeum, who reported directly to Jassy, previously served as general manager of AWS Korea for almost six years starting in 2014, according to his bio supplied by AWS. He led all customer-facing teams working with enterprises and startups in Korea, and his management responsibilities included engaging with c-level executives regarding their digital transformation and innovation strategies, developing business through channels and alliances, driving overall awareness of AWS in Korea and managing business operations.

Prior to that, Yeum spent almost seven years with Google, most recently as managing director of Google Korea, overseeing sales and business development operations. He also was director of business development and head of business development for Google Korea and has experience as an entrepreneur, business consultant, and merger and acquisition analyst.

Wise, named to CRN’s 2019 list of the top 50 most influential channel chiefs, is credited with building the world’s largest channel partner ecosystem among cloud computing providers, with tens of thousands of consulting, systems integrator, independent software vendor, technology alliance and managed service provider (MSP) partners. He led AWS’ partner business development and sales professionals, solution architects and program leaders, reporting to Mike Clayville, AWS’ vice president of worldwide sales and business development, who answered directly to Jassy.

AWS’ MSP business was growing at a rate of almost two times that of AWS, Wise told CRN earlier this year, citing it as one of the AWS Partner Network Program’s (APN) top accomplishments in the last year. Partner-led migrations to AWS had quadrupled year-over-year, he said.

Brendan Caulfield, co-founder at ServerCentral Turing Group, didn’t expect the personnel changes to affect his Chicago-based company, which is an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, MSP Partner and Authorized Public Sector Partner.

“We’re dealing with our partner team, which is probably a level or two below him in most cases, so I don't know how much necessarily direct impact this will have on us as a partner,” Caulfield said. “Obviously, if they bring somebody in with a fully different agenda, that will trickle down to us. But in terms of day-to-day management of our partnership relationship, I don't think this will have a material impact.”

The APN has matured very significantly over the past two to three years and is a “pretty solid program,” according to Caulfield.

“It's arduous,” he said. “They’ve made it more difficult for partners to stand out, which generally speaking, is a good thing for us. So I don't look at the partner program within Amazon as something that needs a lot of fixing. They've done a pretty good job of building up the network and putting programs in place that allow qualified partners to make a name for themselves and stand out within the network.”

“Obviously, anytime there's a change of that magnitude, you just question what things are going to change, but I have a lot of faith in the partner channel leadership team that I know,” he said. “I’m pretty confident that we should be able to move forward without a whole lot of hiccups or concerns.”