Netflix mainly runs from caching boxes at ISPs though. Most of their content comes from there. AWS is way too expensive to serve all that content from.
I see a lot of dumb implementations. At work we're picking up all our physical servers and moving them to AWS compute boxes that run 24/7. Purely statically, just because our idiot CIO wants to be a "cloud-driven company" so he can spout the buzzwords. We're spending a lot more money to get the same only on someone else's computers and get none of the actual benefits that cloud can offer.
Yes. But Netflix is by far AWS’s largest customer. The distribution happens on caching boxes. But there is a lot of processing that happens on AWS. You can look at any of the numerous reinvent videos or even Netflix’s own blog.
Just because your company has a brain dead lift and shift implementation (don’t do that), doesn’t mean every company does.
As a former employee of AWS ProServe (Amazon’s internal cloud consulting department - full time direct hire employee) and now and outside consultant, I’ve seen and been involved in a lot of large scale implementations.
I have no love lost for AWS the company (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44607821) , but let’s not pretend it’s a bunch of startups and naive enterprise corporations that don’t know tech.
I see a lot of dumb implementations. At work we're picking up all our physical servers and moving them to AWS compute boxes that run 24/7. Purely statically, just because our idiot CIO wants to be a "cloud-driven company" so he can spout the buzzwords. We're spending a lot more money to get the same only on someone else's computers and get none of the actual benefits that cloud can offer.