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AWS Snags Former Netflix Cloud Guru for VP Role
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has named Adrian Cockcroft its new vice president of Cloud Architecture, announced CTO Werner Vogels on Monday.
A highlight in Cockcroft's resume is the six years he spent at Netflix, first as director of its Web Engineering team and later as its Cloud Architect. In the latter role, Cockcroft shepherded the media streaming company's move to a fully cloud-native architecture built on the AWS public cloud, a seven-year process that began in the late 2000s and ended earlier this year.
More recently, Cockcroft was a Technology Fellow at investment firm Battery Ventures, where he advised enterprises in their cloud migration plans and provided guidance to portfolio companies.
He has also held engineering positions at Cambridge Consultants, Sun Microsystems and eBay.
Cockcroft is also a member of AWS' Community Heroes program, which recognizes "AWS experts who go above and beyond to share their experience and knowledge through social media, blogs, events, user groups and workshops."
"After working closely with many folks at AWS over the last seven years, I am thrilled to be joining the clear leader in cloud computing," Cockcroft said in a prepared statement. "The state-of-the-art in infrastructure, software packages, and services is nowadays a combination of AWS and open source tools -- and they are available to everyone. This democratization of access to technology levels the playing field, and means anyone can learn and compete to be the best there is."
Vogels said Cockcroft will "work closely with AWS executives and product groups and consult with customers on their cloud architectures -- from startups that were born in the cloud to large Web-scale companies and enterprises that have an 'all-in' migration strategy. Adrian will also spend time engaging with developers in the Amazon-sponsored and supported open source communities."