May 28, 2021

Larry Augustin, Amazon Web Services's VP of applications, left the company in recent weeks, according to people familiar with the matter, a major loss for its expansion into the business applications and open source software space. Augustin, a software industry veteran with almost 30 years of experience, had joined Amazon in 2019 to lead AWS's cloud applications and open source efforts. He reported directly to AWS CEO Andy Jassy, according an internal organizational chart previously reported by Insider . The reason for his departure couldn't be learned. Augustin declined to comment. "We've had and continue to have remarkable retention and continuity of leadership at the company," an AWS spokesperson said in a statement. "The average tenure is 10 years for our vice presidents and more than 17 for our senior vice presidents. Like with any company, people leave from time to time for personal or professional reasons." Augustin's hire in 2019 was a move by Amazon to double down on the massive enterprise software space, given his extensive experience in business apps and open source software. Prior to AWS, Augustin was CEO of SugarCRM, a provider of open source customer management software, for almost 10 years. He was also the CEO of VA Linux Systems for nearly a decade until 2002. While AWS is considered a market leader in the cloud infrastructure and platform areas, it doesn't have a large presence in the market for business software, lagging behind competitors such as Microsoft and Google. Some of its business apps, like QuickSight and WorkDocs, which compete against Tableau and Dropbox, respectively, haven't gained much traction. Augustin's departure follows the loss of Adam Bosworth, another high-profile executive who left AWS in early 2020 . Bosworth was reportedly working on a product called "AWS for Everyone," a service that helps users create business apps with little or no software code. Bosworth used to report  to Augustin. Amazon is grappling with the biggest leadership upheaval in company history. Jeff Bezos is becoming executive chair and will be replaced as CEO by Jassy in July, while longtime retail chief Jeff Wilke resigned earlier this year. More than 45 of Amazon's most senior executives have left the company since early 2020, an unusually high rate of turnover, as Insider previously reported . Amazon's open source business has come under greater scrutiny in recent years. Members of the House Judiciary Committee wrote in its antitrust report last year that AWS used proprietary customer data to decide on what "knock-off" version of open source software to create on its own. Earlier this year, open source software maker Elastic changed its licensing policy , after accusing AWS of trademark violation and "ethically challenged behavior. "  Was this article valuable for you?