> He didn't understand that the retail operation runs on top of the cloud services...
I pretty sure they would be aware of this, however it doesn't mean this needs to be the case. If the companies split they would just purchase cloud capacity as any other customer would.
> ...and the cloud services started as excess capacity the retail bits didn't need.
No it didn't, this is a common myth.
> You can't really split them.
Of course you can. Just like plenty of other businesses run sites on AWS I am sure Amazon.com could continue to run on AWS if the companies split.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
