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Why The New York Times Planned to Replace Three Data Centers with Google Cloud and AWS

In 2017, The New York Times planned to close three leased data-center sites and move most workloads to Google Cloud and AWS, while retaining its Manhattan facility. Later reporting said the migration was still underway; its completion is not confirmed here.
From TheFinanceBase Team4 min to read
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In April 2017, The New York Times said it planned to close three leased data-center sites and move most workloads to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Amazon Web Services (AWS). The plan did not call for eliminating every physical facility: the paper expected to retain its Manhattan data center for video editing, network equipment and older applications considered difficult to move. A later interview said the migration was still underway and aimed to finish in the second quarter of 2018; the available reporting does not confirm whether that target was met or what NYT uses today.

What The New York Times announced in 2017

Data Center Knowledge reported on April 18, 2017, that Nick Rockwell, then the Times’ chief technology officer, planned to shut three of the publisher’s four data centers hosting content and internal applications. The sites included leased equipment space in Newark, Boston and Seattle, plus an internal facility in the Times Square building. The three leased locations were slated to close; the New York facility was to remain for selected workloads. Data Center Knowledge’s report described a proposed migration, not verified closures.

The Times already used Amazon services, including an AWS virtual private cloud, and had some applications in Google Cloud. Rockwell characterized the older backend as a “jumbled mess.” That description explains the modernization effort as reported at the time; it is not a current assessment of the publisher’s infrastructure.

How the planned workload split worked

The reported design assigned workloads according to their technical needs rather than moving everything to one provider. Oracle-dependent applications were expected to go to AWS. Most other applications were planned for containers on GCP, orchestrated with Kubernetes. Some applications were expected to remain on AWS virtual machines, particularly packaged enterprise IT software that fit that model.

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Workload or function 2017 plan reported
Applications dependent on Oracle databases AWS
Most other applications Containers on GCP, with Kubernetes orchestration
Some virtual-machine workloads, especially packaged enterprise applications AWS
Video editing, network equipment and older applications considered difficult to migrate Retain at the Times Square facility

These were expected placements, not a final inventory or evidence that every workload reached its intended destination.

Why use two cloud providers?

The 2017 account presents a practical, workload-specific rationale: Oracle-dependent systems and some established enterprise applications were associated with AWS, while the Times planned to run most other applications as containers on GCP. The later engineering interview adds context about different levels of application readiness, managed services and operational tooling. It does not establish that a two-provider design is inherently cheaper or better for other organizations.

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Deep Kapadia, an engineering director at the Times, discussed the transition on the Google Cloud Platform Podcast. He described App Engine as appropriate for some applications and Google Kubernetes Engine—called Google Container Engine in the interview transcript—as a way to deploy containers without operating Kubernetes directly. He also said the data team’s positive experience with BigQuery helped prompt evaluation of Google’s managed cloud services. These comments explain choices made during that migration, not a current product comparison.

Kapadia also described continued AWS workloads and the use of Kubernetes and Terraform as part of an effort to use portable or shared tooling across providers. The interview illustrates a trade-off: moving an application with little replatforming can differ substantially from adapting it to a managed service or container platform. Kapadia framed the infrastructure team’s changing role as helping product teams move faster, saying, “we want to be building more applications and less infrastructure.”

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What the migration timeline does—and does not—show

In the podcast interview, Kapadia said, “So no, we haven’t finished the migration yet. We are slated to finish it in the second quarter of 2018.” The statement establishes that the work was incomplete when he spoke and that Q2 2018 was the target then. It does not establish that the deadline was achieved.

The reporting covered here does not confirm whether the three leased sites ultimately closed, whether all planned workloads moved, or what the New York Times’ present-day architecture is. The 2017 announcement should therefore be read as a historical plan, not a description of current operations.

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Fastly, breaking-news delivery and the projected savings

The 2017 report also described Fastly’s content delivery network as caching content at edge data centers, which Rockwell expected would reduce the infrastructure the Times needed to deploy. For a push-notification API handling breaking news, he cited a volume of 25 million to 30 million notifications per minute. Data Center Knowledge reported that AWS support for the service then cost about $25,000 per month, and that Rockwell expected a planned GCP-plus-Fastly setup to cost about $5,000 per month.

Those figures were reported estimates from 2017, not audited results. The lower monthly figure was a projection, not confirmation of achieved savings, and neither figure should be treated as a current price.

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What readers can conclude

  • The announcement concerned closing three leased sites and shifting most workloads to GCP and AWS, not immediately removing every physical data-center function.
  • The Times planned to keep its Manhattan facility for video editing, network equipment and hard-to-move applications.
  • The workload split described in 2017 reflected application requirements and operating preferences; it was not a published final deployment inventory.
  • The available reports do not establish the eventual closure status or the Times’ current cloud providers and architecture.

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