Binge-watching has skyrocketed during the COVID-19 quarantine and Amazon Web Services CTO and star engineer Werner Vogels says that the lack of issues has proved that AWS is the perfect cloud for video.
"Considering how many top streaming services run on AWS, it's a testament to scale on AWS," Vogels said during his pre-recorded keynote for Amazon's virtual AWS Summit on Wednesday.
Vogels typically kicks off AWS events with the opening keynote and he kept the tradition going even though the pandemic has caused the conference to shift entirely online. Normally, his keynote is chock-full of new feature announcements, but he ignored that sort of thing this time (even passing on an opportunity to brag about an AWS-designed, next generation Arm-based chip that's been earning attention from the press). Instead, he used his keynote to showcase how AWS is the cloud of choice for streaming video, a move that came across as a subtle dig at Oracle, one of its arch-rivals.
While he didn't name names, AWS's most famous customer is Netflix. Way back in 2009, Netflix was one of the first companies to bet its business on Amazon's cloud instead of building its own data centers. The two companies have grown up together since, with AWS learning a lot about how to be a good, reliable cloud provider from Netflix. Nowadays, their relationship is more complicated of course, as Amazon Prime Video is one of Netflix's biggest online streaming competitors.
Despite that, Netflix remains with AWS mostly because its cloud has become a reliable bedrock for video streaming.
As Vogels pointed out, the past few months of the pandemic has been a source of pride for AWS as usage of streaming services has skyrocketed while much of the world has hunkered down at home, watching TV.
Vogels shared two two slides that showed how COVID-19 has increased binge watching. One showed how daytime streaming has increased about 39% in March 2020 compared to previous years.
The other showed that people are streaming twice as much video in March 2020 as they did a year ago.
Not so fast, Oracle
By kicking off the event with a showcase of how AWS handles video, rather than with a bunch of new product announcements, the company is making statement: It wants you to know that its cloud is the biggest and best for video streaming.
Meanwhile, AWS has a competitor making waves these days over cloud video: its arch nemesis Oracle. Oracle's cloud — which was late to the game and often not considered a serious contender to the big three of AWS, Microsoft and Google — is having a moment as both Zoom and 8x8 announced this month that they've chosen Oracle's cloud for their video-conferencing services.
All the attention Oracle gained by winning Zoom as a customer may be sticking in AWS's craw a bit, as Zoom is also using AWS, per a Business Insider interview with CEO Eric Yuan last month. Later in the event, AWS CEO Andy Jassy honed in on that point: The "vast majority of Zoom's cloud infra runs on AWS and will for foreseeable future," he said. Jassy also name-dropped Hulu and Disney+ as customers.
Remember, Oracle and AWS have been at each other's throats for years now as AWS tries to win away Oracle's database customers (which still include most of the largest enterprises in the world) while Oracle has been building its cloud to prevent that. The rivalry is so fierce that Jassy has even broken Amazon's rules about not talking about competitors to throw barbs at Oracle founder and chairman Larry Ellison.
Meanwhile, Oracle vigorously lobbied the federal government (with great success) not to choose AWS for its massive, $10 billion JEDI contract when AWS was originally considered a shoo-in. JEDI went to Microsoft.
In addition to the shoutout about how well AWS has handled quarantine binge-watching in March, Vogels showcased how well his cloud handles video creation by showing off a customer: London feature-film and ad spot production company Untold Studios.
Vogels also sprinkled in references about how cloud computing is the perfect tool for "working remotely during times of crises" because "it's about being as productive as you can be," using video production as an example. Video production is typically not the kind of thing that lends itself as well to disparate remote work, as video files can require petabytes of storage, and such big files can overwhelm a remote, hom-network connection.
So the message Amazon seemed to want to get across was subtle but clear: Forget what you've been hearing about a competitor having a better cloud for video services.
