But if your app has any kind of server-side functions at all, then itll need to connect somewhere - either your own app running on a server or some 3rd-party service. While itвЂ™s technically a backup service, it offers sync as well. Answer (1 of 3): If you are only talking about the app itself, yes it is hosted on Apple. If youвЂ™re concerned about where your iCloud data is stored, you might consider using a storage system that doesnвЂ™t offer a Finder-mountable volume, but does provide user-controlled encryption and never even possesses your passphrase or encryption keys: SpiderOak. (It canceled an Irish project over delays, apparently.) And to comply with Chinese law, Apple has opened one data center there, with another planned, to store data for Chinese customers within the country. This may change, as Apple says it plans to spend $10 billion on data centers in the U.S. Given the scale of these data centers, you might wonder what all the servers are up to, but it requires a lot of computation to manage sync, iOS backup, iCloud Drive, iTunes Store and Apple Music, and file encryption involved with hundreds of millions of users, and third-party apps that make use of iCloud-based features. The company operates several data centers, but apparently hasnвЂ™t yet ramped up to house the massive quantities of disk drives necessary to host iCloud file content. Tim CookДЄpple CEO Tim Cook (center) breaks ground with Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval (right) and Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve (left) on a new data center. This is a perfectly reasonable and common way to rely on commodity storage and yet ensure that if the data were intercepted or downloaded, itвЂ™s of no utility effectively ever to someone obtaining it. It stores metadata-information that describes the files-and all the encryption keys on its own servers, while the file chunks are stored anonymously on S3 and Google Cloud (or elsewhere). For Apple, which is trying to transform itself into a service provider and entertainment behemoth that doesnвЂ™t have to rely so heavily on selling expensive phones every year, itвЂ™s an expenditure that will likely only continue to soar.Apple notes that it encrypts the files it stores on other services by breaking them into вЂњchunksвЂќ and using strong encryption on each piece.

Regardless, the size of AppleвЂ™s AWS commitment is notable if only for shedding light on just how much money it costs, at a minimum, to run a service like iCloud operating on nearly 1.5 billion devices. Neither Amazon nor Apple were immediately available for comment. Apple runs a number of data centers of its own throughout the US and it is likely a chunk, or even a majority, of its online services run on those data centers, although the company has never explicitly disclosed this information. ItвЂ™s not clear in this case that Apple will require much more compute from AWS and thus a larger, more expensive contract.

Other big tech firms like Netflix and Spotify have notably been using AWS for years, making their streaming empires reliant on AmazonвЂ™s cloud. A number of other companies not large enough to operate their own data centers or cloud services of their own - like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft do - have also publicly disclosed substantial AWS contracts, including a more than $1 billion commitment from Snap Inc. Lyft said it has committed to paying Amazon $300 million through 2021 due to an ongoing contract, while Pinterest says it will have paid Amazon around $750 million by the end of a six-year contract expiring in 2023. A number of large tech companies that have filed to go public this year have revealed in financial documents that they pay Amazon hundreds of millions per year. Apple is one of AmazonвЂ™s biggest competitors and one of AWSвЂ™s biggest customersДЄpple is far from the only company to run parts of its cloud on Amazon servers.

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