So I found out the other day that Netflix is on the cloud. This shocked me in many ways. I love Netflix, their products and most of the time their service. But I have a reliability problem when it comes to Netflix that I thought for sure a cloud would provide. Then I found out where they had deployed to. Amazon Web Services, which in some ways should not surprise me. Recently they suffered an outage on the US East Region that affected Netflix although supposed invisible to the user. Netflix did have to do a whole bunch of stuff on the back end to keep this crash from affecting customer facing services. Now their are parts of Amazon I can stand by. S3 is an amazingly reliable service. Their EC2 instances not so much. Also I would not think S3 has the throughput to truely support HD streaming. So unabridged although some new information has come to light my open love letter to Netflix.
Dear Netflix,
I am selfish in our love affair. I know this and you know it. You knew it going into our relationship. I ask for so much and you charge me so little. Now I wanna give back. I wanna tell you that you live in a shack and its time to upgrade to the prominence you belong. Time to leave the ghetto and move in with all the rich people. Because you are rich. You have all kinds of content that I wanna enjoy. But I don’t wanna wait I am demanding. So, I want more of your content to be stream-able. To my TV, My iPad, my iPhone, or heck you can stream it straight into my brain I am down. But here is the one catch. I need HD. I want HD. If I don’t get more HD our love affair may end with me screaming at you until we can never have a future again. But I am willing to pay for this. I am not greedy. You give me something I will give you something. So here is how we stay together forever.
More HD content. And in exchange charge me more, tier your packages I will pay you. You have become my favorite place to go for content. No more iTunes, Amazon, or Best Buy. My love affairs with them are over. Just you, me and a lot of movies and TV shows. But I need more, we are growing stagnant. Give and take Netflix, give and take. You give me more you can take more from me. This is why you need to go to the cloud. You can have more space. This is like your new home in the Hamptons. Its time to move there from your single bedroom apartment in the Bronx.
I need you to be more reliable. My content pausing, pixelating, or losing sync just won’t cut it in our new arrangement. I need reliability. I need flawless audio and video. Now I don’t blame you entirely for this Comcast is at fault as well, because they don’t want us to be together. They are the ex who is trying to get me back. Well let’s get you a CDN and guarantee they won’t win me back over. I wanna be in it for the long haul. But, how can I if I can’t rely on you when I need you most.
So here we are Netflix. At the precipice of our life together. And you need to make a decision. Invest in me and your other 20 Million lovers. Or we may leave you and go check out Hulu Plus or Amazon Instant. Oh that’s right you forgot they were there waiting to snatch up your sloppy seconds. Happily waiting in the wings like vultures. Don’t make me turn to them I don’t wanna go. I wanna stay here with you. Amazon already has the cloud. They already have a CDN. But the Amazon Cloud isn’t as good as we can make your home in the Hamptons. We will give you nothing but the best. Amazing hard drives. Lots of bandwidth. And some sweet blade servers to call your own. Doesn’t that sound amazing?
So please Netflix. Don’t make me say the lines that kill every relationship. Don’t make me think about cheating on you with one of those other services. Get me more content, more HD, and lets move you into a new home. If we can do all that I am sure all 20 Million of your lovers will help pay. Sign us up!! But please don’t make me say It’s not me it’s you!!
Love,
The Cloud Geeks