Amazon Web Services Inc. is no longer the only game in town. The Netflix Inc., release of Spinnaker, a continuous integration/continuous delivery platform, as open source is a sign that other infrastructure-as-a-service platforms are catching up, writes Wikibon analyst Brian Gracely.

Netflix, an early convert to cloud-native enterprise status, runs its cloud service primarily on AWS. Its former Cloud Architect Adrian Cockcroft (@adrianco) has publicly stated on several occasions that AWS is the leader in IaaS features and tools. However, some observers have speculated that Netflix might prefer to have alternative cloud platform providers available both because of potential conflict with Amazon’s streaming video service and to provide Netflix with some cost arbitrage.

Whether or not Spinnaker is an indication that Netflix is expanding to other platforms is an open question. However, the now open source CI/CD platform supports the AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure unstructured platforms as a service and the structured Cloud Foundry PaaS that can run on multiple IaaS services. This is both a signal to companies making the journey to cloud that more than one choice is available and also a tool that those companies can use to manage their own cloud presence.

Image: Netflix