netflix’s success through technology and culture - andicom 2014
DESCRIPTION
Netflix is the world's leading internet television network. In this presentation, I talk about the aspects of Netflix culture that have contributed to its success. The freedom and responsibility culture, with highly aligned, loosely coupled teams of amazing, enthusiastic, helpful, high performance people with excellent judgement has helped build Netflix to adapt and change quickly, and iterate to make the best service possible. By eliminating rules and processes, and ensuring that employees have the contexts of the business in all aspects, Netflix has enabled employees to use their judgement to get things done rather than relying on control or process. This has resulted in Netflix becoming a leader in not only internet streaming, but also cloud computing, media, and culture. Because of the Netflix culture, we have been able to attract and retain great employees. I give a few examples from my team, Edge Engineering of how the culture enables us to build the high scale, resilient and dynamic services that are the front door to the Netflix streaming application, and how the freedom we have has enabled us to open source core technologies that are needed for large scale, service-oriented architectures in a cloud environment. This slideshow also gives a high level overview of how the streaming service works, and how Netflix's Open Connect Appliance can help ISPs.TRANSCRIPT
Netflix’s Success through Technology and Culture
Mikey CohenNetflix
September 4, 2014
Over 50 million subscribers
in over 40 countries
Netflix accounts for over 34% of peak internet traffic in North America
1,000,000,000 hours is about
100,000 yearsper month...
Netflix supports over 1000 device types
How it all Began
...a short history
1999 - DVD by Mail
Netflix vs Blockbuster
“Epic” Battle ends..
2007- Netflix Streaming Begins
Huge Growth in Streaming
Tomorrow: 3 Years in Latin America!
Very Soon! Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg
Why has Netflix Been Successful?
Netflix is a different kind of Company
Imagine..
Freedom and Responsibility
Highly Aligned - Loosely Coupled
Context not Control
Rules
Hiring
Leadership Management
Pay
Focus
..In short
Netflix culture enables talented people to build great products by minimizing process and enabling us to do what we love...
About my Team (Edge Engineering)
● Build and operate the front door and control systems for Netflix streaming
● Billions of requests per day ● Constant code changes● ~ 20 people
○ Platform 5○ Delivery 5○ Services 6○ Management 4
Netflix Culture and Edge Engineering
● Build highly scalable, resilient, dynamic systems
● Act fast, react fast● Freedom to radically experiment● Open Source what we developed
OSS Thought Leadership from my small team
● Zuul - Netflix’s Cloud Edge Router● Hystrix - Service Resilience● RxJava - Reactive Extensions● Turbine - Data stream aggregation● Ribbon2 - SOA client● Prana - Cloud platform support for multiple
programming languages.● Scryer - Predictive cloud Autoscaling (** not yet)● Nicobar - Dynamic code/scripting library (** not yet)
Success of the Culture
● Streaming Success● Media Success● Cloud Computing Leader● Cultural Leader● Attract and retain great employees
How Netflix Streaming Works
The Parts..
Netflix Services
in Amazon Cloud (AWS)
CDN Your CE Device
Our Cloud Infrastructure
Edge Services (API and Playback)
Zuul
Website
Netflix Services
Cassandra
Memcache
Device Under the Hood
Cloud
CDN Your CE Device
User Interface
Netflix Streaming Platform
Cloud
User Interface loaded, data retrieved from Netflix Edge Service
CDN
Edge Services
Your CE Device
User Interface
Netflix Streaming Platform
Cloud
User Interface Loaded
CDN
CE integration
Edge Services
Your CE Device
User Interface
Netflix Streaming Platform
Cloud
Authorization / Obtain License
Your CE DeviceCDN
Edge Services
Your CE Device
User Interface
Netflix Streaming Platform
Cloud
Content and CDN located
Your CE DeviceCDN
CE integration
Edge Services
PlayData
Your CE Device
User Interface
Netflix Streaming Platform
Cloud
Streaming Starts
Your CE DeviceCDN
CE integration
Edge Services
Your CE Device
User Interface
Netflix Streaming Platform
Content Delivery
User Interface
Netflix Streaming Platform
DRM
Cloud
encoding
Your CE DeviceCDN
CE integration
How Netflix can help ISP’s
...as Netflix gains popularity...
Inbound network traffic increases
Netflix Open Connect to the Rescue!
Netflix OCA
Netflix Open Connect
● Reduces ISP cost by serving Netflix traffic from the local ISP datacenter, rather than upstream network interconnects
● Netflix bears the capital and maintenance costs, not ISP
● ISP provides space, power and a network port● Free of charge to ISP
How Open Connect has helped ISPs
● 10X ISP traffic growth in < 12 months after Open Connect
● About 90% of Netflix traffic offset by Open Connect in Latin America (~80% in N. Am)
● International transit cost savings● Ultra HD/4k streams, 3D streams, and high
Netflix Speed Index attracts and retains ISP customers
The Future of Netflix and Television
Future of Netflix and Television
● Internet TV○ By 2016 50% of television will be delivered by
internet● Smart TV revolution
○ 100 million Smart TV’s will be sold this year○ By 2025 everyone will have a smart television
● Smart Netflix - Algorithms○ Predict the 1 - 3 shows you want to watch now.
Internet TV & Creative Freedom
How Netflix will get us to the future
Technology
Execution
Culture
For more information...
● Netflix Culture● Netflix Open
Source● Tech Blog● Jobs