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Netflix Shuts Down Final Bits of Own Data Center Infrastructure

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Re: Netflix Shuts Down Final Bits of Own Data Center Infrastructure

#41
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the problem. The problem is if Netflix is paying Amazon, then their cost is infrastructure + profit, whereas Amazon only has infrastructure costs. Fundamentally it means Amazon can be more competitive, and Netflix are hoping they can stay ahead on the user experience curve.

I'm betting on it. Not sure how big you think the AWS bills are. :) Edit: See jedberg's comment below for where the real money goes.

I'd love to see a ball park bill for netflix :)

Re: Netflix Shuts Down Final Bits of Own Data Center Infrastructure

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be surprised at what a good job the individual pieces of Amazon's empire do at operating as individual units as far as competition is concerned. It would be VERY bad business to "screw" an AWS customer because they competed with some other part of the organization as a whole. Given that Amazon operates in so many spaces and could potentially expand to any space, this behavior would effectively make AWS unappeal…

I'd like to believe this, but then I can't buy an Apple TV through Amazon because of some petty dispute over Prime Video (which I really don't care about). So if Amazon the store can pull products to try to protect prime video, then how can I be sure that other units won't?

Yeah, same thing with Chromecast. Booted off Amazon in a lame attempt to boost Prime Video and Fire TV Stick sales.

Re: Netflix Shuts Down Final Bits of Own Data Center Infrastructure

#43
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm betting on it. Not sure how big you think the AWS bills are. :) Edit: See jedberg's comment below for where the real money goes.

I'd love to see a ball park bill for netflix :)

Compared to the licensing/production costs hosting the front ends is peanuts. At least that's what Adrian Cockcroft used to say before he left.

Re: Netflix Shuts Down Final Bits of Own Data Center Infrastructure

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to believe this, but then I can't buy an Apple TV through Amazon because of some petty dispute over Prime Video (which I really don't care about). So if Amazon the store can pull products to try to protect prime video, then how can I be sure that other units won't?

Yeah, same thing with Chromecast. Booted off Amazon in a lame attempt to boost Prime Video and Fire TV Stick sales.

Well, they claimed they removed non-Amazon devices because they didn't support Prime Video. However, for stuff like Chromecast, the burden lies on the app developer (which would be Amazon) to implement Google's Cast SDKs to provide support.

Re: Netflix Shuts Down Final Bits of Own Data Center Infrastructure

#45
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be surprised at what a good job the individual pieces of Amazon's empire do at operating as individual units as far as competition is concerned. It would be VERY bad business to "screw" an AWS customer because they competed with some other part of the organization as a whole. Given that Amazon operates in so many spaces and could potentially expand to any space, this behavior would effectively make AWS unappeal…

That's not the problem. The problem is if Netflix is paying Amazon, then their cost is infrastructure + profit, whereas Amazon only has infrastructure costs. Fundamentally it means Amazon can be more competitive, and Netflix are hoping they can stay ahead on the user experience curve.

Netflix would have to be pretty good at negotiating content licensing to have their costs dominated by bit shovelling.

Re: Netflix Shuts Down Final Bits of Own Data Center Infrastructure

#46

Is Netflix at the top end of some curve? My understanding of moving from cloud -> datacenter is, you know, there is some line where it's cheaper to just lease your hardware than pay for cloud infrastructure. At that size you tend to have DBAs, dedicated infrastructure people, etc., to make scaling up go. But now has Netflix come through that line where the cost savings is outweighed by the uptime/availability etc.?

It would be beneficial for amazon to sell their services at 50% off to take netflix out of the game of running the DC themselves for the next 15 years

Re: Netflix Shuts Down Final Bits of Own Data Center Infrastructure

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That infographic isn't very clear. It's hard to separate the impact of Prime Video from Prime and from normal Amazon operations. How many people buy Amazon Prime for the video streaming? What percentage of the $800M Prime revenue is attributable to the video service? I'd wager less than 10%. Does Netflix spend more than $80M a year on AWS? The numbers needed to answer the question aren't publicly available. It's a bu…

Considering the bills I've seen for AWS at even modestly-sized companies, I would not be surprised if Netflix spends more than $80M a year on AWS. In fact, considering the amount of bandwidth they use, I'd be surprised if they didn't. They spent $1.3B on "General/Administrative Expenses" last year - think more than 6% of that was infrastructure?

Quite possibly, but also keep in mind that there's no way Netflix pays anywhere remotely near AWS published prices. I'd be surprised if they pay even 1/5th of the published prices.

Especially on bandwidth, anyone can buy bandwidth at well below 20% of AWS prices elsewhere. Netflix shouldn't be paying even 10% of published AWS bandwidth prices given their volumes.

Re: Netflix Shuts Down Final Bits of Own Data Center Infrastructure

#48

Is Netflix at the top end of some curve? My understanding of moving from cloud -> datacenter is, you know, there is some line where it's cheaper to just lease your hardware than pay for cloud infrastructure. At that size you tend to have DBAs, dedicated infrastructure people, etc., to make scaling up go. But now has Netflix come through that line where the cost savings is outweighed by the uptime/availability etc.?

It would be beneficial for amazon to sell their services at 50% off to take netflix out of the game of running the DC themselves for the next 15 years

Much, much less. If you spend more than a couple of millions a year on AWS you're being robbed if you haven't negotiated a much steeper discount than 50%. I happen to know of companies paying ~25% of published AWS prices. Especially on bandwidth, the published AWS prices are almost criminal - I'd be surprised if Netflix pays even 10% of published prices.

Re: Netflix Shuts Down Final Bits of Own Data Center Infrastructure

#49
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS and Heroku aren't really competitors. Firstly, since AWS is IaaS, whereas Heroku is PaaS, they target different users. More importantly, Heroku is built on top of AWS, so Amazon gets paid for all the resources used by Heroku apps.

AWS has Elastic Beanstalk, which is a Heroku competitor.

Sort of. They're still targeted at different users, though.

Heroku is for individual developers to directly develop their app in terms of.

AWS, meanwhile, is mostly for enterprises: it's a "virtual datacenter" for your (much-reduced) ops team to manage in place of a real datacenter. In that sense, Elastic Beanstalk is not a service that AWS provides developers—it's a service that AWS provides your ops team to provide to in turn provide to your developers.

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