Dropbox built their own super servers; Microsoft and Amazon had better watch out

Dropbox VP of engineering, Aditya Agarwal announced today that the company has managed to finally break off from Amazon’s cloud empire. They will be going forward using their very own super servers that have been built from scratch. https://twitter.com/adityaag/status/709417445555974144 Dropbox, the cloud storage specialist that is said to be going through a tough phase, has somehow managed to muster the courage to give cloud computing giants like Amazon and Microsoft the boot and actually build its own cloud, with some added brains. Aditya tells Wired that Dropbox has built a storage solution that is upwards of 500 petabytes in capacity! If you’re unaware, 1 petabyte equals 1000TB or  1,000,000 GB of storage. And all of this works in sync with a new system called Magic Pocket. To put these figures in perspective, Microsoft and Facebook are both estimated to have operated cloud servers totaling 300PB in capacity each. Amazon was hitting the one exabyte mark, or 1000PB. Bear in mind that this was in 2012, but even by that measure, Dropbox’s 500PB of storage is a massive investment and speaks volumes about their plans for the platform. Dropbox Storage Team Lead, James Cowling, puts things into perspective in his own way. He claims that the entire written works of mankind can be stored on 50 petabytes. He adds, “For us, that’s just a couple of racks”. This is keeping in mind that the complete system is capable of storing more than 500 petabytes of data which is roughly around 52,42,88,000 GB of storage, which is quite a lot and seems enough for humanity at the moment. What 4K, VR and 360 degree videos will do to that statement, we can’t say for sure. Dropbox claims that it is using the best technology available and is maxing things out to deliver the best experience to its customers. The transition will not affect consumers in any way, say Dropbox. Their data will be safe and as accessible as it’s always been. Dropbox will feel the pinch for now, however. Moving things off Amazon’s cloud services to their own, custom built platform was expensive and time-consuming, but they feel that it’s worth the investment. You’ll be surprised at the number of company’s that use third party cloud services like Amazon’s AWS or Microsoft’s Azure. Apple, for example, relies entirely on AWS to power their iMessage platform as does, apparently , their iCloud service. Companies like Apple can afford to be this indulgent however. For smaller companies like Dropbox it is indeed time to grow smarter as their companies scale and grow with time. DropBox has taken that step and for now it seems like a good move to be independent. Of course all of this did not just happen overnight—it took about two and a half years to migrate. With Magic Pocket, Dropbox even built its own programming language, which was yet another feat of engineering. Dropbox has obviously invested very heavily in this migration and have built a foundation that’s capable of taking on giants like Microsoft and Amazon. Let’s hope their bet pays off.