Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) today announced a new developer contest called the “Netflix Cloud Prize”, designed to make cloud computing better for everyone.
The web’s top video rental service has promised an award worth a total of $100,000 to the developers who do the best job of improving cloud-computing features, usability, quality, reliability and security.
“Cloud computing has become a hot topic recently, but the technology is still just emerging,” Neil Hunt , chief product officer at Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX), said in a statement. “No doubt many of the key ideas that will take it to the next level have yet to be conceived, explored, and developed. The Netflix Cloud Prize is designed to attract and focus the attention of the most innovative minds to create the advances that will take cloud to the next level.”
The competition is open to anyone with their own GitHub account. Anyone with an access to Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX)’s repository may participate in this contest.
The contest is divided into 10 categories that offer a US$10,000 prize each and will be judged by a panel of independent technology pioneers : Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Werner Vogels, Thoughtworks Chief Scientist Martin Fowler, Strategist Simon Wardley, Telx Senior Vice President and author of Cloudonomics Joe Weinman, University of Aarhus Developer Training Expert Aino Corry and Netflix Cloud Vice President Yury Izrailevsky.
“We’re laying railroad tracks for cloud adoption and usage,” said Neil Hunt. “The Netflix Cloud Prize is designed to improve understanding of what it takes to build native applications for the cloud that take full advantage of the opportunities for scalable computing.”
Cloud computing, on a larger scale, includes digital product and service that doesn’t reside solely on a person’s desktop PC, laptop, or tablet but rather relies more often than not, on a server elsewhere. These external servers may include shared Google documents, Dropbox storage, Hulu or YouTube videos.
Deadline for entry is September 15, 2013 with winners to be announced at the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Re:Invent conference in November. There’s more information on the prize at Github.
