AWS-Logo-OrangeAmazon is courting former chief information officers in an effort to bring in more enterprise cloud computing business.

The Wall Street Journal reported on the pattern, which includes the recent hiring of former Dow Jones & Co. CIO Stephen Orban, Amazon’s new head of enterprise strategy at Amazon Web Services, and former Schumacher Group CIO Douglas Menefee, who came to Amazon as an enterprise CIO advisor in March.

Both Orban and Menefee had extensive experience with AWS software in their previous roles, and Amazon appears to think that the new employees will help convince CIOs at other companies to purchase AWS products.

In a post on Medium, Orban outlined his new role:

Using my own experiences and lessons learned in building a cloud-first enterprise, I will be working with enterprise technology executives to help them with this journey. I’ve had to work through the nuances of equipping a staff with new skills, building a DevOps organization, managing the transition of fixed capital expenses to variable operating expenses, influencing the executive team, and cloud design patterns, among others. I’m excited to share everything I’ve learned and I aspire to contribute to our customers’ success.

At the same time, I will be among the growing number of voices inside of AWS advocating for the enterprise. What needs to be built into our services to better serve the enterprise? How do we position services to resonate as well in the enterprise as they do in the developer community? What customers should we bring together to share experiences so they are gaining intelligence from like-minded people they trust?

The WSJ also noted that some CIOs feel alienated by AWS and the new hirings are a way to “shake hands with IT,” as one analyst put it.

The new employees come to Amazon as its battles companies like Microsoft, Google, and others to attract new customers to their different cloud platforms. Earlier this month, Microsoft hired a veteran of Amazon’s retail business, Suresh Kumar, as its new corporate vice president in charge of cloud infrastructure and operations.

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