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Netflix shuts down final datacentre to go all-in on public cloud

Netflix is gearing up for the closure of its final datacentre, as it makes good on its earlier pledge to move more of its IT infrastructure to the public cloud

Caroline Donnelly
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Published: 17 Aug 2015 12:30

Netflix is on the cusp of closing the last of its datacentres, as the online streaming giant prepares to move more of its IT infrastructure to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Netflix plans to close the last of its datacentres before the end of the summer.

“For our streaming business, we’ve been 100% cloud-based for customer-facing systems for some time now, and are planning to completely retire our datacentres later this summer,” Netflix said in an email.

The company then went on to say it is “fully reliant on Amazon Web Services”, but does make use of a mix of software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications elsewhere in its business – for human resources (HR) applications, for example.

Netflix has been steadily shrinking the size of its datacentre footprint over the past seven years, in line with the growing demand for its services.

In a blog post dating back to 2010, Netflix said it had decided to cede control for building its own datacentre infrastructure, so its engineers can spend more time developing services rather than maintaining servers.

Success pushes cloud move

Moving to the cloud has given it the flexibility to adapt to the surge in subscribers it has experienced, as the availability of popular shows like Breaking Bad, Orange Is the New Black and Daredevil have resulted in more people using the service.

AWS regularly holds up Netflix as an example of a company that’s decided to go “all-in” on the public cloud, a strategy it claims many enterprises will follow.

This viewpoint is slightly at odds with the view of other major players in the cloud computing market – such as Microsoft and VMware – who predict most firms will opt to go down the hybrid IT route, as there will always be elements of their infrastructure that will need to remain on-premise or in a private cloud.

Read more about Amazon Web Services (AWS)

  • The hybrid cloud should be treated as a stop on the enterprise’s overall journey to the cloud, rather than the final destination, according to Amazon Web Services (AWS).
  • Public cloud giant wants to tap into sub-continent's growing demand for cloud services while tackling latency and sovereignty issues.

However, speaking at the AWS Summit in London earlier this year, CTO Werner Vogels said the hybrid cloud should be considered a stop on the enterprise’s overall journey to the cloud, rather than the final destination.

“All of these services are there to make hybrid IT possible, but you have to realise that – in our eyes – hybrid IT is not the end point,” said Vogels.

“For a long time, many of you will still have your own datacentres, but there will be less and less datacentres over time.”

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