Bloomberg on Netflix as World’s Biggest User of Cloud Computing

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Bloomberg on Netflix as World’s Biggest User of Cloud Computing

By CircleID Reporter
May 09, 2013, 7:39 pm PDT Views: 12,636 Add Comment

Netflix is arguable one of the world’s biggest users of cloud computing, renting all its computing power from Amazon Web Services, the cloud division of Amazon.com, which runs its own video-streaming service that competes with Netflix. Ashlee Vance from Bloomberg reports:

“Netflix has more than 36 million subscribers. They watch about 4 billion hours of programs every quarter on more than 1,000 different devices. To meet this demand, the company uses specialized video servers scattered around the world. When a subscriber clicks on a movie to stream, Netflix determines within a split second which server containing that movie is closest to the user, then picks from dozens of versions of the video file, depending on the device the viewer is using. At company headquarters in Los Gatos, Calif., teams of mathematicians and designers study what people watch and build algorithms and interfaces to present them with the collection of videos that will keep them watching.”

By CircleID Reporter — CircleID’s internal staff reporting on news tips and developing stories. Do you have information the professional Internet community should be aware of? Contact us.
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