It is not unusual for tech giants to provide various types of web services to each other, similarly to how until recently, Amazon Web Services was hosting some of Apple’s cloud services. However, the most probable reason behind it is not some quality of service debate, but instead, Apple wishing to expand their cloud-providing capabilities for the time being. It is suspected that the switch from AWS to Google is merely temporary and has only taken place because it happened in an area where the two tech giants are not in direct competition.
Last year, Apple signed a deal with Google to receive assistance with some of their iCloud and other services, but the shift only took place recently; various publications are stating that Apple spent an approximate sum of $500 million with Google, although sources did not mention whether this is the expense Apple made with the switch from AWS to Google alone.
Meanwhile, Apple did not completely shift their remote iCloud services to Google but have also visibly diminished their reliance on the remaining AWS data centers. Some believe that this change is purely temporary as Apple has multiple personal data centers in the plans scheduled to go into action by the year 2017. Some of the locations that Apple is looking at are Mesa, Arizona, Ireland and Denmark in Europe. The last two will independently power Apple’s online services for the entire European continent, ensuring that all the core internet apps of iOS such as iTunes, App Store, Maps, Siri, and iMessage continue functioning properly.
It is very probably that Apple is planning to shift the entirety of its online services to their own data center. Analysts believe that Apple spends roughly $1 billion on Amazon Web Services on a yearly basis alone, under the circumstances in which AWS supports about 90% of its cloud business. In the circumstances in which Apple wishes to stop relying on outside infrastructure, the company has formed a team named McQueen that is concerned with this aspect entirely.
According to specialists, if Apple opens its planned data centers stated earlier, it could break even with the data center services that it has to purchase from the likes of Amazon and Google in roughly three years, at which point it would start running 100% independently. At least in what the iCloud services are concerned.
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