AWS’ Teresa Carlson to join Splunk

This story has been updated with Carlson’s replacement.

WASHINGTON — Teresa Carlson, the public face and founder of Amazon Web Services’ public sector business, is joining San Francisco-based data platform company Splunk, her new company announced Monday.

Carlson, AWS vice president of worldwide public sector since 2010, will become Splunk’s president and chief growth officer. In that newly created position, she will work on Splunk’s business transformation by advancing the company’s cloud-first initiatives and identifying new markets. An Amazon spokesperson confirmed that Max Peterson, VP of international sales in AWS’ public sector business, will replace her.

Carlson helped build AWS’ public business into a giant that provides cloud services to more than 6,500 government agencies. Under her leadership, AWS built up national security credentials by providing cloud services up to the top secret level and becoming a major cloud provider for the Defense Department and intelligence community.

At Splunk, she will report to President and CEO Doug Merritt.

“Teresa has an incredible record of leading category defining high-growth companies at global scale to even greater success. I’ve had the privilege of getting to know her as a partner during her tenure at AWS, and know she’ll be an excellent addition to our team,” Merritt said in a press release.

Carlson’s first day at Splunk will be April 19.

“I am thrilled to join the passionate and talented team at Splunk, and motivated by this opportunity to bring exciting cloud and data solutions to global customers across all industries,” Carlson said in a statement. “Together, we will build on Splunk’s legacy of innovation as one of the fastest growing companies in the history of enterprise software.”

AWS has faced increasing competition in the national security realm. It served as the intelligence community’s primary cloud provider since 2013 and is among the five vendors named as part of the IC’s new multi-cloud environment.

Carlson leaves AWS has the company continues to challenge the Defense Department’s decision to award Microsoft its Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud, an enterprise cloud contract with a $10 billion ceiling over a decade. Experts widely viewed the decision as a major upset.

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