I wish we could observe a parallel universe where Netflix went a different route and stayed with dedicated or went with colocation. I'd love to compare the outcome with their decision to go with AWS (minus CDN).
They came from a datacenter world before they moved to AWS. The problem was that they had a traditional enterprise IT organization with big process and relying on Oracle, SANs, and all the same old enterprise IT solutions. It was built to run a company that was focused on operating warehouses and logistics, and not an agile web company.
Moving to the cloud was as much an organizational transformation as it was a technical one. And the move to AWS has paid them dividends in organizational and technical agility, as well as execution speed. I will never believe that it saved them money when compared to a well run physical infrastructure that was more purpose built for what they do, but they did not demonstrate the ability to run a physical infrastructure well so it's kind of moot.
It worked out great for them and gave Adrian some great stories to share. Congrats to him on the move to Battery, that's a fantastic team.
Moving to the cloud was as much an organizational transformation as it was a technical one. And the move to AWS has paid them dividends in organizational and technical agility, as well as execution speed. I will never believe that it saved them money when compared to a well run physical infrastructure that was more purpose built for what they do, but they did not demonstrate the ability to run a physical infrastructure well so it's kind of moot.
It worked out great for them and gave Adrian some great stories to share. Congrats to him on the move to Battery, that's a fantastic team.