Netflix vs. Cloud - Personal vs. Business

For the CIS 275 Assignment 25 class I have chosen professors Twitter post “Netflix video is 20% of US evening download traffic. Do you subscribe to cable TV? Satellite? Do you stream Netflix?” with a short URL at http://slate.me/dhWGxi.

This article interests me because of its personal and business aspect it deals with.

As a Netflix subscriber I found out that I keep DVD’s and Blu-ray discs more and more at home. Because of that I spend more time watching movies by streaming them to my Netflix Roku DVR box or thru my Sony Blu-ray disc player that offers Netflix online streaming as one its built-in applications. This article made me wonder as if I am or will be contributing to the potential broadband throughput saturation or I will not play such a big role in it? What can I do? Nothing personally but when the time comes lower streaming habits and get back to the physical media. On the other hand, network speeds are improving every day. Therefore, I can’t really envision time when Netflix could cause such a bandwidth collapse. Maybe if we would combine all the services that offer HD broadcast, streaming, etc. that could mean more, but from the perspective of the end user, I don’t see or feel it happening. As a customer all I care is getting the service when I want it. That’s what justifies the word on-demand.

From the business aspect, this article made me wonder what could potentially happen with all cloud services that all service providers and software manufacturers are aiming towards. Everyone is emphasizing importance of the cloud and having all of your data and applications stored and run online. But what would happen to that data if the bandwidth collapses? I am scare even to think about that. As an IT professional I root for services like these, but now I am a bit skeptical about them. I need to think forward and for the benefit of the company I work for. I must not let be surprised by a possibility like this. Therefore, I will keep my data local, run regular differential and full backups while slowly merge towards the cloud with a bit of cautiousness. I don’t want that cloud to become a storm that will wipe out every tinny bit and byte of the data I am trying to preserve and protect.

And to answer professor’s question, I do subscribe to cable TV but spend more time watching streaming on-demand video because of my time schedule.