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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

#61

Post by malsun »

Scaevolus wrote: post #11
late2part wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

false. http://www.business-management-degree.net/features/amazon-vs...

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…

Amazon Prime reminds me of how the telecommunications industry sell services. They have customers signed up to a bundle of services like: landline, mobile, cable/satellite TV and broadband.

If the customers don't want TV they are put on a free tier rather than being cancelled, so they are still officially a TV subscriber and can boost the viewing figures for the service.

It's useful to be vague if you are in a dying industry or your competitors are better established.

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

#62

Post by acdha »

everly wrote: post #10
danhou wrote: post #4

Is it just me, or is it a massive risk to have your entire infrastructure hosted by a company who is also one of your chief competitors?

I've always found it totally bizarre. I just picture Bezos in his office, cackling to himself over Netflix' shortsightedness.

Do you have the same reaction to Apple buying processors from Samsung or Intel? Google buying operating systems from Microsoft or Apple? In each of those situations they've decided that level of risk is outweighed by the cost of trying to do everything in-house. Data centers are an expensive business to be in and Amazon can amortize their costs over a much larger base than Netflix.

The thing to remember is that businesses routinely do this kind of thing and rely on contracts and markets to manage their risks. Even assuming that they don't have guarantees in the agreement giving Netflix those famously low rates, if Amazon chose sabotage they'd be endangering their much larger cloud business and that would hurt them for much longer than the time it would take Netflix to migrate to Google, Azure, etc. Even if you're completely unethical and a ruthless competitor, it's hard to argue that Amazon wouldn't benefit far more from making Prime Video a more interesting product, which conveniently also has no potential downsides.

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

#63

Post by dorfsmay »

diab0lic wrote: post #17
danhou wrote: post #4

Is it just me, or is it a massive risk to have your entire infrastructure hosted by a company who is also one of your chief competitors?

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…

This might be true, but only true until a change in management. Given everything I've seen and read about Netflix, I suspect they have contingency plans and should be able to move to a different infrastructure provider in a few months.

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

#64

Post by true_religion »

diab0lic wrote: post #17
danhou wrote: post #4

Is it just me, or is it a massive risk to have your entire infrastructure hosted by a company who is also one of your chief competitors?

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…

Granted this is true in the case of Amazon, but some conglomerates do not act this way.

Telecom companies regularly try to make rules to ensure those that compete with cash cow voice or cable-TV services have to do so on unfavourable grounds.

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

#65

Post by true_religion »

vidarh wrote: post #47
bsimpson wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most of Netflix's bandwidth goes through their Open Connect CDN, which isn't hosted on Amazon's infrastructure but is rather a traditional setup of colocated servers in strategically positioned data centers.

Previous to this arrangement Netflix used 3rd party CDNs like Akamai which again did not sit on Amazon's infrastructure.

That said I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with any assessment of how much Amazon costs are.

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

#66

Post by l3m0ndr0p »

danhou wrote: post #4

Is it just me, or is it a massive risk to have your entire infrastructure hosted by a company who is also one of your chief competitors?

It's super risky. Amazon could decide to slow things down for Netflix, or introduce some infrastructure issues that they can't track down. Maybe amazon should be broken up. Break out their online video offerings into a separate company. This would prevent any conflict of interest or blackmail

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

#67

Post by harrisonhjones »

firloop wrote: post #44
modeless wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

First read: http://www.androidauthority.com/amazon-new-app-forced-google... to understand that Google won't allow competing app stores. (https://play.google.com/about/developer-distribution-agreeme... for more details section 4.5)

As per this document: https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/android_sender You need Google Play Services (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Play_Services#Concerns) to write an Android app with the Cast API.

Because of this, Amazon cannot distribute Google Play Services on their own Android devices and therefor cannot use their own Android devices to cast to a Chromecast. They could enable Prime Video on other Android devices but not their own. They feel this will cause confusion and therefor have decided not to write a Prime Video app for Chromecast. Saying "oh, Amazon just doesn't want to write a Prime Video app for Chromecast", while true, doesn't truly explain the complexities of the situation.

The business decision to remove Chromecasts from the network steps from the above desire to prevent confusion. I personally don't agree with it but I understand it.

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

#68

Post by late2part »

late2part wrote: post #3

Great story, brah. Except for the CDN. https://openconnect.netflix.com/peeringLocations/

A lot of folks responded to this by talking about how Netflix asks ISPs to put caches in the ISP locations.

That is true but it's not the point.

Netflix runs a large CDN on their own infrastructure, and rents space in various datacenters.

They "peer" from these locations to distribute their traffic, and they also buy transit to distribute their traffic. They also send traffic to ISP caches from these locations.

So they are running their own data centers, in many locations.

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

#69

Post by tetraverse »

tetraverse wrote: post #50

What did it cost to transfer Netflix to AWS and what are the running costs charged to Netflix. I recall reading somewhere that the first attempt was less than successful, and Amazon had to virtually rebuild the service from scratch.

Answering me own question ..

"NETFLIX OpenConnect Appliance deployment guide:"

http://oc.nflxvideo.net/docs/OpenConnect-Deployment-Guide.pd...

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

#70

Post by liveoneggs »

l3m0ndr0p wrote: post #66
danhou wrote: post #4

Is it just me, or is it a massive risk to have your entire infrastructure hosted by a company who is also one of your chief competitors?

It's super risky. Amazon could decide to slow things down for Netflix, or introduce some infrastructure issues that they can't track down. Maybe amazon should be broken up. Break out their online video offerings into a separate company. This would prevent any conflict of interest or blackmail

video serving on netflix is done through openconnect, usually on-site in your ISP: https://openconnect.netflix.com/

The AWS stuff is all support services like watchlists, descriptions, etc

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