Netflix Testing Waters with Google Cloud

Netflix is an epitome of how to use AWS. The Netflix's Internet-based, video-on-demand service uses AWS to organize a colossal catalog of content and keeps track of all its users and their video preferences. AWS enables Netflix to deploy thousands of servers and terabytes of storage within minutes. Netflix with Amazon has also open sourced its container management platform Titus that powers critical aspects of the Netflix business such as video streaming, big data, content encoding, studio technology, and more.

But in order to cater to the requirements of its growing global subscriber base, Netflix is exploring the multi-cloud world. The company is testing the services of other cloud providers as well such as Google Cloud, for functions comprising AI and disaster recovery. Netflix has worked with Google on Spinnaker, the former's open source, multi-cloud continuous delivery platform, and launched Kayenta for automated canary analysis.

For Google, Netflix proves another major client win after acquiring industry giants such as Apple, Spotify, eBay, Colgate-Palmolive, and Verizon as its customers, some months ago. Google shall be receiving €365 million in three years from Spotify as per an updated filing, and it is reported that Spotify plans to transition all data storage from its servers to the Google Cloud.

Even research illustrates the working of the multi-cloud world. According to 451 Research, in its Cloud Transformation Vendor Window study in 2017, approximately 50 percent of the organizations studied used cloud vendors other than their primary cloud provider for various purposes. The research vice president, Melanie Posey, stated that organizations were utilizing multiple cloud providers to host and support different types of functioning, instead of merely relying on one or two providers.

As innovative and intelligent methods to facilitate interoperability increase alongside the growing complexity of the cloud landscape, an increase in movement between cloud providers is to be definitely expected. And Netflix's experimentation with more than one cloud provider exhibits the diversity of the multi-cloud world and its deployment to come.