Zynga shows how to build a hybrid cloud

Posted by on Apr 25, 2012 in Blog | 0 comments

When it comes to building a hybrid cloud, just ask game maker Zynga how it’s done. That’s because Zynga, like many start-ups, started out as an Amazon EC2 customer, but as it grew it recognized it would need to build out its own data center too. Yet instead of giving up EC2, Zynga opted for a hybrid approach and has solved many of the issues that may be concerning you about going in a similar direction — but is Zynga’s experience applicable to all companies? Networkworld recently interviewed Zynga CTO Allan Leinwand to find out what it took to pull off a hybrid cloud...

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Amazon Proves Cloud Competition Good for IT

Posted by on Mar 16, 2012 in Blog | 0 comments

Last week Amazon Web Services announced that it was dropping its prices. According to a post on ZDNet, this was the 19th time in 6 years that Amazon agreed to drop its prices and it’s another case of the price of technology services going down — a trend that has to make any cash-strapped IT executive smile. It’s probably a big contributing factor as well as to why Amazon is the number one cloud service provider in the world. How big? Very big. According to a post on GigaOm, analyst Huan Liu from Accenture estimates that the Amazon Elastic Cloud service encompasses an...

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Why Private Clouds Make Sense for IT

Posted by on Feb 17, 2012 in Blog | 0 comments

My colleague George V. Hulme has a post today over on Cloud Commons with the amusing title, Private Cloud Haters – The Game is on Like Donkey Kong. While the title may be fun, the subject matter is very serious and private clouds actually make a lot of sense — just as much as public ones do — and for similar reasons. In his post, Hulme waxed about why there are so many cloud haters, then described the way game maker Zynga mixes the private and public cloud. “Zynga’s goal, as stated in GigaOM was to launch new games into the public cloud, where workloads may be spiky...

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Zynga Plans to Handle Its Own Data Centers

Posted by on Jul 12, 2011 in Blog | 0 comments

Zynga, makers of the infamous Farmville game on Facebook has up until recently mostly relied on Amazon to host its games, but according to an article on Venture Beat this week, that could change when Zynga gets a cash infusion from its upcoming initial public offering (IPO). According the Venture Beat article, Zynga plans to invest between $100 million and $150 million later this year to expand its own data centers. In fact, Zynga has been operating some of its own data centers for some time and according to an Informationweek article, they have an usual data center strategy: Most companies...

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