Amazon cloud unit kills Snowmobile data transfer truck eight years after driving 18-wheeler onstage

At


Amazon’s
annual
cloud
conference
in
2016,
the
company
captured
the
crowd’s
attention
by
driving
an
18-wheeler
onstage.
Andy
Jassy,
now
Amazon’s
CEO,
called
it
the
Snowmobile,
and
said
the
company
would
be
using
the
truck
to
help
customers
speedily
transfer
data
to
Amazon
Web
Services
facilities.

Less
than
eight
years
later,
the
semi
is
out
of
commission.

As
of
March,
AWS
had
removed
Snowmobile
from
its
website,
and
the
Amazon
unit
has
stopped
offering
the
service,
CNBC
has
confirmed.
The
webpage
devoted
to
AWS’ “Snow
family”
of
products
now
directs
users
to
its
other
data
transport
services,
including
the
Snowball
Edge,
a
50-pound
suitcase-sized
device that
can
be
equipped
with
fast
solid-state
drives,
and
the
smaller
Snowcone.

An
AWS
spokesperson
said
in
an
emailed
statement
that
the
company
has
introduced
more
cost-effective
options
for
moving
data.
Clients
had
to
deal
with
power,
cooling,
networking,
parking
and
security
when
they
used
the
Snowmobile
service,
the
spokesperson
said.

“Since
we
introduced
Snowmobile
in
2016,
we’ve
released
many
other
new
services
and
features
which
have
made
migrating
data
to
AWS
even
faster
and
easier
for
our
customers,”
the
spokesperson
wrote.

Snowmobile
was
priced
at
$0.005
gigabytes
per
month,
not
including
other
costs,
according
to
a
page
formerly
on
the
AWS
website.
For
a
company
with
100
petabytes
of
data
—
the
capacity
of
a
Snowmobile
—
a
transfer
job
would
cost
about
$500,000
per
month.

Amazon’s
decision
to
axe
Snowmobile
comes
as
Jassy
implements
cost
cuts
across
the
company
to
contend
with
lackluster
sales
growth.
Amazon
has

slashed
more
than
27,000
jobs
since
late
2022
and
has
discontinued
projects
in
the
devices
and
retail
units.
The
cuts
have
continued
this
year,
with
Amazon

laying
off
hundreds
of
jobs
in
AWS
earlier
this
month.

While
it’s
fairly
routine
for
AWS
and
rivals


Microsoft
Azure
and


Google
Cloud
Platform
to
get
rid
of
products
and
services,
the
elimination
of
Snowmobile
stands
out
due
to
the
splashy
way
it
was
introduced
at
the
company’s
showcase
Reinvent
conference
in
Las
Vegas
in
late
2016.

Jassy,
who
at
the
time
led
AWS,
was
delivering
his
keynote
before
tens
of
thousands
of
people
in
the
crowd,
when
the
18-wheeler
joined
him
on
stage.

“We’re
going
to
need
a
bigger
box,”
Jassy
said,
as
audience
members
rushed
to
raise
their
smartphones
to
capture
photos
of
the
spectacle.

Jassy
told
the
crowd
why
the
truck
was
groundbreaking.
Over
a
10
gigabit-per-second
connection,
it
would
take
26
years
to
move
an
exabyte,
or
1
million
terabytes,
of
data
to
the
cloud,
he
said.
An
AWS
customer
could
do
the
job
with
10
Snowmobiles
in
under
six
months,
he
said.
Each
Snowmobile
had
a
capacity
of
100
petabytes
on
hard
disk
drives.

In
a

blog
post
coinciding
with
the
launch
on
Nov.
30,
2016,
Amazon
cloud
evangelist
Jeff
Barr
described
Snowmobile
as “a
ruggedized,
tamper-resistant
shipping
container
45
feet
long,
9.6
feet
high,
and
8
feet
wide”
that “can
be
parked
in
a
covered
or
uncovered
area
adjacent
to
your
existing
data
center.”

Barr
helped
to
convey
the
supposed
simplicity
of
the
process
with
photos
of
a
Snowmobile
built
out
of
Lego
getting
connected
to
a
corporate
data
center.

“We
intend
to
make
sure
that
Snowmobile
is
both
faster
and
less
expensive
than
using
a
network-based
data
transfer
model,”
Barr
wrote.

But
the
product
didn’t
take
off.

A
spokesperson
for
satellite
operator
Maxar
said
the
company
used
Snowmobile
once
in
2017
to
move
more
than
100
petabytes
to
AWS
from
its
own
servers.
Snowmobile
was
an “ideal
solution
for
that
moment
in
time,”
the
spokesperson
said.

“Since
then,
we
have
been
uploading
our
imagery
and
associated
data
directly
to
the
cloud,”
the
spokesperson
added.

AWS
still
leads
the
giant
cloud
infrastructure
market
and
generated
$90.8
billion
in

revenue
last
year,
accounting
for
16%
of
Amazon’s
total
sales.
The
company’s
spokesperson
said
AWS’
Snowball
Edge
devices,
which
clients
can
return
to
Amazon
by
mail
after
filling
them
up
with
data,
are
smaller
than
the
Snowmobile
vehicles,
cost
less
and
have
a
shorter
turnaround
time.

There’s
also
the
AWS
DataSync
service
for
moving
data,
announced
in
2018.
Clients
generally
find
that
sending
data
to
AWS
online
is
more
economical
than
using
Snowmobile,
the
company
said.

“We
couldn’t
be
more
proud
of
the
value
that
Snowmobile
has
brought
to
customers,
and
we’re
pleased
to
see
them
choosing
newer,
more
efficient
technologies,”
the
spokesperson
wrote.