Netflix To Shut Down Its Last Data Center

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Netflix revealed that they are planning to wind-down their last data center and private cloud service by the end of this summer. This decision makes it the first major firm to manage all its information technology needs remotely or through the public cloud.

Netflix transition to public cloud took 7 yrs.

In an email sent to CIO Journal, the streaming firm said: “For our streaming business, we have been 100% cloud-based for customer facing systems for some time now, and are planning to completely retire our data centers later this summer.”

As far as IT infrastructure or servers are concerned, Netflix is now “fully reliant on Amazon Web Services.”

Netflix’s transition to the public cloud has taken it seven long years. In 2008, Netflix encountered a major hardware issue, and from the next year it started moving to AWS, first shifting its jobs page. In a presentation last year, the firm noted that it moved its Big Data platform in 2013 and billing and payments in 2014.

Adrian Cockcroft, former Netflix cloud architect, told the WSJ that the streaming firm has a small but dedicated team of IT professional, who have been systematically shifting firm’s corporate system to the cloud.

Use of public cloud rising

The use of public cloud is rising among the corporates. However, a lot of companies still prefer to run sensitive software in a private cloud or in-house data center. A hybrid arrangement is also used by many companies. For smaller firms and startups, the public cloud is the best option, but with Netflix closing its last remaining data center, we can also say big firms are also moving towards the public cloud.

According to Glenn O’Donnell, vice president and research director at Forrester Research, “A 100% cloud operation is going to be extremely rare for big established companies.” Many big firms are moving towards the cloud, but are unable to make a full transition, noted O’Donnell. Citing examples, the expert says insurance companies and mainstream banks still rely on in-campus mainframe computers for the financial transactions, adding that legacy systems and applications are the toughest part to move to the cloud.

According to a recent survey of 1,500 IT professionals by Better Cloud, nearly 12% of the firms (the majority of which are small or medium-sized businesses) fully depend on the cloud for their IT operations. By 2022, around 20% of the big companies are anticipated to operate completely in the cloud.

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