Evernote Corporation announced today that Google Cloud Platform will provide its data infrastructure from now on. The note-taking company’s vice president of operations Ben McCormack wrote in a post on the Evernote Blog that the cloud is the future.
After thoroughly reviewing their options, McCormack and company arrived at the conclusion that a modern cloud service was the solution for storing user data. Evernote researched and investigated several cloud providers but ultimately selected Google Cloud Platform.
While market leader AWS and runner-up Microsoft Azure were the safest choices, Evernote is especially interested in Google’s machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. Since its launch in 2008, Evernote had owned, configured, and maintained its servers and networks from its data centers.
McCormack cited that even though running their business allowed them to build the service they wanted, it’s also becoming more expensive to maintain, slow to upgrade, and difficult to scale.
Evernote expects to finish moving its user data by December
In a recent interview, Evernote’s chief technology officer Anirbin Kundu said they hoped to have left their data centers by December. The company plans to begin syncing data to new servers in early October and finish before the end of the year.
The transition means transferring between three and 3.5 petabytes of user data from its 200 million customers from Evernote’s two current data centers into the Google Cloud Platform. A single petabyte is equivalent to a thousand terabytes and a million gigabytes. It can store the DNA of the entire population of the United States as well as clone them twice.
Evernote’s data comprises all the digital content users have stored. It includes notebooks, photos, and other multimedia files like music and videos but also user preferences, annotations, and attachments.
What does the transition mean for Evernote and users?
McCormack cleared out that the migration process will happen in the background without users noting any impact whatsoever. According to him, Google Cloud Platform will improve Evernote’s performance, security, and privacy.
The security controls in Google Cloud’s security controls meet those of Evernote. Additionally, the platform will finally provide the popularly demanded data at rest encryption. Evernote also remains committed to the Three Laws of Data Protection that have always guided them: data is from users, data protection, and data portability.
As part of the deal, Google will give Evernote access to deep-learning technologies that power services such as translation, photo management, and voice search. Some of the biggest companies in the world already rely on Google Cloud Platform. Spotify, Snapchat, Coca-Cola and Philips are a few examples.
Source: Evernote Blog