Michael Abbott, Apple’s cloud chief overseeing all of its cloud services namely iCloud, FaceTime, iMessage, and Find My, plans to depart the company in April, according to a recent report by Bloomberg.

Before joining Apple in 2018, Abbott had served in senior roles at Twitter, Palm, and Microsoft. At Apple, Abbott commanded the operations of iCloud and other cloud-based services, including the newly launched Advanced Data Protection for iCloud and Emergency SOS via satellite on newer iPhones.

The report explains how Abbott was a key member in the company’s initiative to build its own custom cloud infrastructure dubbed “Project McQueen”. However, Apple recently slowed down its effort and instead opted to continue its reliance on Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. Bloomberg elaborates that Abbott’s team “oversees a custom layer that sits on top of that infrastructure to optimize it for Apple’s offerings”.

The cloud services group had invested heavily in building an infrastructure to power its offerings. But more recently, the company has pared back that effort in favor of using servers hosted by Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. Abbott’s group oversees a custom layer that sits on top of that infrastructure to optimize it for Apple’s offerings.

In recent years, Abbott has hired several cloud industry leaders to bolster Apple’s operations, but the integration of the new talent hasn’t gone as smoothly as some within the company had hoped, people familiar with the effort said.

Bloomberg

Abbott’s position will be handed over to Jeff Robin according to the report. Robbin is considered as the creator of iTunes, and similarly to Abbot, has been overlooking engineering for a number of services under Apple’s SVP of Services, Eddy Cue.

Abbott will be the second VP under Cue to depart this year after Peter Stern, who ran the business and marketing sides of services such as Apple TV+ and Apple News. He was widely regarded as a possible successor as Apple’s SVP of Services in place of Cue.