How to Jump From Cloud to Cloud

In 2010, when Netflix was still early into its shift from DVD rentals to online movies and shows, it started using Amazon.com’s data centers. Video streaming’s popularity was growing fast, and Amazon Web Services, the retailer’s cloud computing division, had the capacity to handle the load. Now that Netflix streams 100 million-plus hours of video every day, it’s sticking with Amazon partly because of Amazon’s scale and features, and partly because switching vendors “would be a significant multiyear effort,” says Yury Izrailevsky, Netflix’s vice president for cloud and platform engineering.

All the major cloud providers—including Amazon, Salesforce.com, Microsoft, and Google—use technology different enough so that switching from one to another would require customers to rewrite much of their software. (Jeremy King, chief technology officer of Wal-Mart Stores’ e-commerce division, compares picking a cloud provider to staying at the Hotel California—“You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.”) Still, in the next five years about one-third of companies using the cloud may either switch providers to get a lower price or more features, or add another provider to get servers closer to customers or have a backup should one company suffer a meltdown, says David Linthicum, a consultant who creates cloud applications for companies.