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Netflix, Long an AWS Customer, Tests Waters on Google Cloud

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Re: Netflix, Long an AWS Customer, Tests Waters on Google Cloud

#71

Post by falcolas »

maxxxxx wrote: post #65
falcolas wrote: post #41

This could also be titled "Netflix Ensures its AWS Discounts Continue" AWS sales teams are quite responsive to threats of moving in terms of continuing discounts. I've drawn up migration plans solely to use as leverage against AWS for deep discounts in the past.

Just curious: Can you state a range of possible discounts against list price? The stuff I deal with is small fry but I always wonder how much cheaper the big guys get their cloud services compared to us.

Third hand knowledge - since I was not a part of the negotiations - fair warning. The company I worked for was getting discounts in the 40-50% range. It was the only way they could afford to use AWS, frankly, since it was all static provisioning (i.e. no elasticity in the workload). They were also approaching a petabyte of data stored in S3.

Re: Netflix, Long an AWS Customer, Tests Waters on Google Cloud

#72

Post by treis »

hinkley wrote: post #70
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #60

My prediction is that by 2020 Netflix will move a significant portion of their IT to Google Cloud. Why? Most of their architecture is microservices / linux containers / serverless, and Google is simply way better positioned there (with Kubernetes as their crown jewel). They will eventually win. Source: no source, just my "expert" opinion (6 years at AWS, 2 at VMware's cloud, currently CEO at a startup).

How big doesn’t netflix have to get before it’s in their best interests to build data centers of their own? Toolchains are maturing. They’ve figured out ways to get multiple uses from the same hardware. They shouldn’t be beholden to the rollout or geographical plans of two cloud providers. I don’t even mean build out their entire infrastructure. I think even running your base load on your own hardware makes you under…

They have data centers of their own and distribute all of their own content. AWS powers the UI requests and their back office number crunching stuff. Everything after you push play is done via Netflix's own hardware.

Re: Netflix, Long an AWS Customer, Tests Waters on Google Cloud

#74

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

hinkley wrote: post #64
falcolas wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen upwards of 50% for some particularly large customers. To the point of "if we lose our discount, our company goes under".

Makes you wonder if the vendor is still making money on the deal.

Reserved instances always make money because you make profit without depreciation kicking in.

Re: Netflix, Long an AWS Customer, Tests Waters on Google Cloud

#75

Post by notyourday »

ryanianian wrote: post #38
auvi wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (on which they already get a huge discount) just wondering, how huge (as a percentage) that discount is?

They'll play a few games with contracts to spread the costs around (e.g. giving n% discounts for m years of reserved capacity). You probably won't get much just by saying "I can just go to GCP" and asking for the world. The more you spend, the more distinct services you buy, and the longer you want to commit the steeper the discount. I've seen up to 10% but I'm sure they do more for bigger customers.

They get CAF. When CAF runs out, pricing shoots up.

Re: Netflix, Long an AWS Customer, Tests Waters on Google Cloud

#77

Post by thefourthchime »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #60

My prediction is that by 2020 Netflix will move a significant portion of their IT to Google Cloud. Why? Most of their architecture is microservices / linux containers / serverless, and Google is simply way better positioned there (with Kubernetes as their crown jewel). They will eventually win. Source: no source, just my "expert" opinion (6 years at AWS, 2 at VMware's cloud, currently CEO at a startup).

Another reason is the rumor that Google is going to make their own chips for their Cloud, possibly ARM based. This could have big cost savings with some applications. Video streaming and encoding are one of them.

Re: Netflix, Long an AWS Customer, Tests Waters on Google Cloud

#78

Post by cortesoft »

awakeasleep wrote: post #36
wiremine wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to be Netflix to get AWS, GCP and MS to play against each on pricing. I've seen a number of my clients build a prototype on each platforms, and then use it to make final decision. Part of that final decision is having the cloud vendors compete on price. I personally haven't seen any massive price breaks, but there definitely is room the margins.

Really playing these companies against each other would mean dynamically balancing your services across the providers based on pricing

I work for a large CDN. Lots of big customers do this, they shift their traffic around between different CDNs based on a lot of metrics, including price and performance.

Re: Netflix, Long an AWS Customer, Tests Waters on Google Cloud

#79

Post by tedunangst »

hinkley wrote: post #64
falcolas wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen upwards of 50% for some particularly large customers. To the point of "if we lose our discount, our company goes under".

Makes you wonder if the vendor is still making money on the deal.

Margins are pretty high, in part due to scale. If AWS were to hypothetically sell 80% of capacity at cost, that makes the last 20% more profitable than it would be to just sell the 20% alone.

Re: Netflix, Long an AWS Customer, Tests Waters on Google Cloud

#80

Post by badloginagain »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #60

My prediction is that by 2020 Netflix will move a significant portion of their IT to Google Cloud. Why? Most of their architecture is microservices / linux containers / serverless, and Google is simply way better positioned there (with Kubernetes as their crown jewel). They will eventually win. Source: no source, just my "expert" opinion (6 years at AWS, 2 at VMware's cloud, currently CEO at a startup).

Kubernetes is a huge deal here. The big move to containerization makes GCP very attractive to new infrastructure.
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