Sony turns away from AWS to team up with OpenStack
Entertainment giant Sony’s American arm ditches AWS and embraces OpenStack.
![cloud computing](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/fCSUCHswZ8ai45XuC2eeJS-320-80.jpg)
Sony has dropped Amazon Web Services as its cloud provider in favour of Rackspace's OpenStack platform for its workload.
The deal covers Sony Computer Entertainment of America (SCEA) and covers hosting for games such as "Call of Duty 4:Modern Warfare". The transfer comes after a raft of performance issues that affected the service.
Among the problems were cyber attacks that led to SCEA temporarily shutting down its PlayStation Network, which allows gamers to play with each other online and Qriocity services, which allows users to download and watch films, TV programmes and music. The email addresses, usernames and passwords of 77 million users of the service were also compromised.
A story from Bloomberg linked Amazon Web Services (AWS) to the outage with an anonymous source claiming that hackers created fake AWS accounts and used AWS infrastructure to launch attacks on Sony's network.
According to an email from Rackspace sent to US publication Network World, the migration to OpenStack for SCEA was relatively quick and took six days to complete. However, Rackspace refused to go on record with Cloud Pro to confirm this. A quick check at Hosted-at.com reveals that scea.com (Sony's American website) is being hosted by RackSpace and not AWS (see link hosted-at.com/www.scea.com).
It remains to be seen if Sony will be moving any other services it currently hosts with AWS, but has in recent months been making overtures towards OpenStack since last year's PlayStation outage.
Get the ITPro. daily newsletter
Receive our latest news, industry updates, featured resources and more. Sign up today to receive our FREE report on AI cyber crime & security - newly updated for 2024.
Rene Millman is a freelance writer and broadcaster who covers cybersecurity, AI, IoT, and the cloud. He also works as a contributing analyst at GigaOm and has previously worked as an analyst for Gartner covering the infrastructure market. He has made numerous television appearances to give his views and expertise on technology trends and companies that affect and shape our lives. You can follow Rene Millman on Twitter.
Resources
Get the ITPro. daily newsletter
Receive our latest news, industry updates, featured resources and more. Sign up today to receive our FREE report on AI cyber crime & security - newly updated for 2024.