For the past 13 years, Etsy Inc., the online marketplace for handmade or unique arts and crafts items, was perfectly content to run its content on-premises. While most of Etsy’s users do not need to concern themselves with much beyond locating an item they want to buy and how to buy it, there’s actually a lot going on behind the scenes of these transactions.

“The Etsy marketplace I describe as kind of an iceberg, and the marketplace is actually the tip of the iceberg,” said Mike Fisher (pictured), chief technology officer of Etsy. “Behind that, what you really don’t see is the big data machinery. We process over a billion events a day off of the marketplace.”

To discuss the reasons behind Etsy’s decision to move from on-prem to Google Cloud,  Fisher spoke with John Furrier (@furrier) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Google Cloud Next event in San Francisco. (* Disclosure below.)

Testing for a good cloud fit

For many companies today, the public cloud no longer represents cheap servers and storage. Being under the umbrella of a big cloud provider is an effective way to take advantage of great software and tools that are already fully functioning. This year, it’s expected that cloud computing will accelerate enterprise transformation everywhere as it becomes a must-have business technology for enterprises of any size.

Before selecting Google Cloud, Etsy ran a test with several potential cloud providers. Etsy took one big migration project and broke it down into multiple sub-projects. From each of those, Etsy asked the cloud providers to come up with an architecture that would work in the cloud, according to Fisher. That gave Etsy a set of requirements — 1,400 to be exact. From that, Etsy then experimented with each of the providers and performed architectural discussions to rank them.

“And, ultimately, the provider that won was Google, and they won by over 10 percent. But by doing that, [we] really focused on quantifiable decision, [and] we feel that we made the right decision for our needs,” Fisher said.

A couple of additional crucial considerations came down to cultural fit between the two companies and Google’s commitment to sustainability. Google was extremely agile and willing to meet Etsy halfway on some of the future needs of the company, including environmental concerns, Fisher explained.

Etsy’s migration to Google Cloud began in January 2018 and is anticipated to take two years.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Google Cloud Next event. (* Disclosure: Google Cloud sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Google Cloud nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE