#Zynga zcloud software
Zynga created software called zCloud that helped it shift workloads between Amazon’s servers and its own data center. The company has always relied on AWS for some workloads, even at the height of using its own data centers. “We’re going to let Amazon do that,” he said. Zynga CEO Mark Pincus said on an earnings call that there a lot of strategic places for them to have scale, but running their own data centers isn’t one that’s appropriate. This kind of wide variation is hard to accomplish on your own servers. The type of unpredictable workloads and growth Zynga faced are tailor-made for cloud.įor Zynga to run its own data centers, it meant a mad scramble to provision servers and power during big releases, followed by lulls. It’s often feast or famine for a game publisher, given the unpredictable nature of what gamers glom on to, and the often short lifespan of a title. Online gaming is subject to unpredictable traffic spikes and drastic sways of traffic dependent on the release schedule. This is particularly true in regards to its growth outside of the Facebook ecosystem.
Zynga didn’t grow as anticipated, following bursts of growth. It was the nature of Zynga's business that made this a tricky proposition. However, running your own data center is capital intensive. Zynga appeared to be a business that could potentially “outgrow” cloud, in the sense that once a company reaches a certain scale, it begins to make sense to build your own data centers. Casual and social gaming provider Zynga will shut its data centers and shift workloads back to Amazon, two years after the company spent $100 million to build out its own data centers, according to The Wall Street Journal.