My sister – one of them – turned me on to Downton Abbey, and over the Christmas break, I decided to take the plunge and watch the series opener.

As everyone on this planet knows, Christmas Eve is fraught with many challenges, and I kept on having to take breaks.

Finally, when my kids went to bed – early, so as not to be passed over by Santa Claus – I decided to restart my viewing on Netflix.

I couldn’t log into Netflix.

Initially, I thought my login credentials had been incorrectly entered. They were not.

I later found out that there was a problem with Netflix caused by a disturbance on Amazon Web Services, known as AWS.

Again?

This was the third time this year, if I remember correctly, that there has been a Netflix outage cause by a breakdown of AWS.

Why is this happening?

Yesterday, I tweeted:

After which I got a couple of replies re the robustness of the Netflix architecture.

Technological Fail
Maybe I’m naïve, or not as well versed in this, but 3 major outages in a year means that what ever your failover strategy is, it is NOT working!

It doesn’t matter how robust you architect your service, if the underlying platform keeps failing, ergo, you have failed as well.

Fruit of the poisoned tree, and all that.

Business Fail
The Netflix media repository is built on Amazon Web Services.

That it is so in December 2012 with no [announced] change in sight is incredulous.

For that alone, Netflix’s board of directors should be sacked for shirking their fiduciary duties to their stakeholders!

Why?

Think about this: what company, more than anyone else out there – no matter what delusions RedBox harbors – is ready, willing, and able, to take on, AND supplant Netflix?

Hard to imagine, but the Netflix lifeblood is dependent on a company well positioned to decimate them.

This same ‘partner’ has not only signaled that intent, but is executing a masterful pincer movement designed to cut off Netflix’s air supply!

Moreover, Amazon is better funded, is better regarded on customer service, and is supremely nimble!

Yet, Netflix still relies on AWS.

One day, I’d understand why.

Not today.

© 2012, John Obeto II for Blackground Media Unlimited

Follow @johnobeto