Distributed Cloud Delivers a Win for Customers and for Developers

As gymnast Suni Lee was competing for a medal in the Paris Olympics, families in her home state of Minnesota were on the edge of their seats, ready to leap up in celebration of their local champion. Imagine if, just as she was waiting for her uneven bars score to appear in her final event, the streaming service froze and gave those passionate fans the dreaded buffering “circle of death.”

Fortunately, that did not happen. But not so long ago, media companies often struggled to reach customers located far from their cloud provider’s centralized data centers. Audiences certainly will not tolerate interrupted service like that today. We all want to experience these exciting moments in real time, in the same way we want to redeem digital coupons when we pay for our groceries, see up-to-date inventory on our phones and track our steps from the device on our wrist.

Delivering content to users in real time isn’t just an advantage, it’s a necessity. As the number of users, the location of those users, the data they share and the complexity of network operations expand, technology must rise to meet that demand.

And increased demand is why the cloud is becoming more distributed, with developers pushing up against the scaling limits of the industry’s legacy centralized cloud models when they try to put workloads — and a better experience — closer to their customers. The introduction of distributed cloud is proving to be the means by which developers are making this happen.

For years, cloud providers have offered centralized data centers that handle the heavy compute resources required to scale and innovate, making them essential for modern business. But customers in every corner of the world are driving a call for an elevated user experience that has given rise to the location-centric distributed cloud model.

This new paradigm of moving workloads out to the edge via a distributed cloud offers multiple benefits to developers who need to keep costs down while meeting customer demands for low latency and reliable performance.

Why Developers Like Distributed Cloud

Over half of developers surveyed in a SlashData study said they were currently using distributed cloud services in some capacity. In the same study, two-thirds of IT leaders said their use of distributed cloud services is expected to increase over the next 12 months, with more than one-third saying the benefits of distributed cloud are mission critical to their IT strategy. So if you’re not already building a distributed cloud strategy, there’s a good chance you will soon.

With distributed cloud, the developer manages the centralized cloud, and a distributed cloud provider manages the compute distribution and scale. Location-centric distributed cloud lets developers manage certain key parameters, such as where compute takes place, where data is managed and where security and compliance considerations need to be upheld.

The distributed cloud provider pushes compute power from the centralized location to the edge based on these parameters, scaling services as demand rises and falls. This delivers a level of SaaS efficiency and infrastructure automation that saves valuable time. Developers can spend less time managing infrastructure and more time innovating applications.

Cost Savings

Distributed cloud also simplifies orchestration in line with your policies and reduces the overprovisioning of resources, creating a much more cost-effective deployment environment. For applications that generate large volumes of data, processing data closer to where it is generated with distributed cloud will potentially reduce bandwidth and energy costs as well.

Using a distributed cloud model instead of overprovisioning resources in a central location and risking underutilization, organizations can deploy compute resources precisely where they are needed, scaling regionally in response to demand while optimizing costs.

Then there are egress fees, one of the primary cost drivers in a traditional cloud model. Egress fees can add up quickly, especially for applications that frequently transfer large volumes of data. Distributed cloud architecture mitigates this issue by enabling localized data processing and storage. This minimizes the need for costly data transfers between regions. By keeping data closer to the user, businesses can significantly reduce egress fees, resulting in lower overall costs.

Flexibility

The portability offered by distributed cloud allows you to move application environments from your centralized cloud to distributed, even between different distributed cloud providers, based on the needs of your company and your customer. With it, you have a flexible way to manage and orchestrate services while still working with the cloud native principles you’re familiar with.

Implementing automation tools and using infrastructure as code can further streamline operations, reducing manual intervention and minimizing the risk of configuration errors. Monitoring and analytics tools can provide real-time insights into resource utilization and performance, helping to optimize costs and make operations even more efficient.

The Personalized Experience Customers Expect

The ability to locate data and applications in geographies closest to the user is one of the biggest benefits of a distributed cloud model. This feature is crucial for managing performance peaks and adapting to changing user demands, allowing applications to scale effectively without compromising on performance. The less distance data needs to travel from the digital touchpoint, the better the application performs.

Working with your distributed cloud provider to localize compute to meet customers where they are will deliver the high-performance experience your users expect. And knowing where workloads are running means you have visibility into where availability problems are occurring. All this results in a more highly available and resilient architecture than a traditional cloud model can deliver.

Security and Compliance

Security issues can harm your reputation, break your brand promise and get you in trouble with legislators, making security a major consideration when evaluating the locality offered by distributed cloud. Consistency of policy compliance — among all workloads, applications and data wherever it resides — is difficult in the cloud. Traditional centralized cloud architectures can struggle with data sovereignty issues, as data often crosses borders and resides in regions with different regulatory requirements.

Distributed cloud architecture addresses this by allowing businesses to deploy cloud services in specific locations that meet local regulatory and compliance requirements. This not only ensures that data remains within the boundaries required by various jurisdictions but also enhances security by reducing the distance sensitive data has to travel, as well as the number of locations it passes through along the way.

Achieving improved performance, scalability and resilience is possible by taking a proactive approach and creating a plan for a distributed cloud architecture. The benefits to the developer and to the customer are clear, and the future of cloud computing is pointing in this direction. As the demand for personalized, real-time experiences continues to soar, developers are stepping onto the podium, armed with the power of distributed cloud, to ensure their platforms are open, portable, compliant and cost-effective no matter where in the world their customers are.