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Will AWS Be Spun Off Into a Separate Company? (businessinsider.com)
Ammalgam writes from a report via Business Insider: A credible business school professor who correctly predicted that Amazon would buy Whole Foods now says an AWS spinoff is inevitable. Marketing guru Scott Galloway said Monday at Business Insider's IGNITION conference. The move will also help the company placate regulators who are starting to scrutinize its anticompetitive practices, said Scott Galloway, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business. After the e-commerce giant spins it off, Amazon Web Services (AWS) "will be one of 10 most valuable companies in the world," he said. "The question then becomes, what happens to the old retail-side of Amazon," Galloway added.
Amazon will decide to split off AWS, because it makes a lot of sense and market forces will dictate it, Galloway said. Cloud computing is one of the most important trends taking place in the technology industry, but there's no simple way for investors to profit off it. The three biggest cloud services -- AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud -- are all part of much bigger companies whose results only partially reflect their cloud businesses. As the biggest of the bunch, AWS would be a natural to become its own standalone business, he said. And it could be a huge windfall for Amazon shareholders. Depending on how it would be valued and the multiple to earnings that the market would assign to it, AWS by itself could be see a valuation of anywhere from $70 billion to $600 billion, he said. What do you think? Is this possible?
Amazon will decide to split off AWS, because it makes a lot of sense and market forces will dictate it, Galloway said. Cloud computing is one of the most important trends taking place in the technology industry, but there's no simple way for investors to profit off it. The three biggest cloud services -- AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud -- are all part of much bigger companies whose results only partially reflect their cloud businesses. As the biggest of the bunch, AWS would be a natural to become its own standalone business, he said. And it could be a huge windfall for Amazon shareholders. Depending on how it would be valued and the multiple to earnings that the market would assign to it, AWS by itself could be see a valuation of anywhere from $70 billion to $600 billion, he said. What do you think? Is this possible?
A large part of the value that AWS provides Amazon is that they are able to consume AWS for their own infrastructure, with paying customers helping to defray the cost of operations. In addition to that, Amazon will lose a non-trivial percentage of its best infrastructure people where currently AWS folks are part of the labor pool they can use.
Since Amazon retail competes with so many sectors and has announced it is going to get into banking, pharmacy, etc, many other companies loathe to use AWS. They are worried AWS would be able to hack in and peek into their data. Even if the data is really secure and secret, they hate giving money to a competitor. So if it is spun off, it might gain more customers and become even more profitable. But rest of Amazon has great brand name and loyalty, but very small profit potential. Its main appeal is low cost. So it can't raise prices all that easily.
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