In today’s data-driven world, businesses are increasingly finding that operating in locations closest to where data is concentrated can bring a competitive edge. This is the heart of distributed cloud architecture – a model that extends operations across multiple clouds positioned in key locations. Whether it's for enhancing performance or boosting scalability, a distributed cloud offers enterprises a simple and powerful solution.
Key Takeaways:
Distributed cloud architecture is an operating model that entails the use of multiple clouds across various locations to meet compliance needs, optimize performance, or enable edge computing. Choosing this multicloud approach can help organizations overcome the challenges of vendor lock-in, allowing them to capitalize on the benefits of several different platforms.
It is possible to place distributed clouds in the public cloud provider’s infrastructure, on-premises at edge locations, or in another third-party datacenter. This concept of using both public and private locations is the basis of hybrid cloud deployments and empowers organizations to keep their most important data close to the chest while still leveraging abundant public cloud resources.
Adopting a distributed cloud model has the potential to increase an organization’s IT performance and flexibility across the board, but there are other, more specific benefits worth exploring to fully reveal what makes this architecture ideal for the enterprise.
Perhaps the most meaningful benefits of distributed cloud architecture are its capacity for distributed storage and its ability to safeguard business continuity. It may be one thing to embrace a distributed model for its compatibility with other cloud-native technology, but these aspects are what make the architecture truly ideal for the enterprise.
Distributed storage is a storage system that enables access to data whenever and wherever it is needed and for anyone who needs access. Distributed cloud databases are an important part of this technology, empowering storage and access processes with a cloud infrastructure’s scalability and availability while retaining local control for admins.
Scalability is only one benefit of a distributed storage solution. As with many other forms of cloud storage, this model brings the potential for faster processing speed, enhanced privacy, reduced security risks, and lower energy costs.
Moreover, storage in a distributed cloud architecture is software-defined. This means that it is simple to manage through a single pane of glass and that operators can easily use partitioning and replication to improve storage resiliency. Even scaling the storage system up or down is possible with push-button simplicity, allowing IT decision-makers to quickly respond to changing conditions in the enterprise.
As with other aspects of distributed architecture, distributed storage software communicates with individual devices across a dispersed network to facilitate the transmission of data to a wide variety of locations. By doing so, an organization stores data on multiple systems of storage servers instead of just one, thereby building resiliency and keeping data protected from disasters or breaches.
An organization needs to be ready to protect its core business functions and get them back online as soon as possible after a network disruption or disaster, ideally within minutes or even seconds. The ability to accomplish these goals is a reflection of an organization’s commitment to business continuity.
Distributed cloud architecture has the potential to improve business continuity by leaps and bounds by ensuring increased uptime, even during disaster scenarios. The nature of a distributed cloud deployment is such that individual cloud services can be untethered from the main cloud, allowing them to function even if another system experiences a crash.
Cloud distribution methods, including distributed cloud storage, also serve to strengthen data security and data protection outright. It is possible to replicate data across multiple sites or multiple virtualized instances. In this way, the distributed cloud offers elevated protection against ransomware attacks and other risks, as well as faster disaster recovery when a breach does occur.
VynZ Research reports that the global business continuity management market is projected to reach USD 1.8 billion by 2030, illustrating the industry-wide need for IT security solutions and cost-efficient measures. The implementation of distributed cloud architecture is one way that enterprise leaders can meet these critical goals.
The distributed cloud model is ideal for enterprises that need to manage data securely, quickly, and efficiently. Distributed cloud storage and business continuity features can make all the difference, and adopting the right cloud platform puts those benefits directly in the hands of IT decision-makers with minimal disruption to business operations during the transition.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure(NCI) is uniquely capable of bridging distributed clouds into a hybrid multicloud model, as well as cloud-native Kubernetes on distributed infrastructure. With hyperconvergence on NCI, organizations have the power to leverage distributed system technologies that enable a wide range of architecture options, such as the construction of private clouds within the datacenter.
What it comes down to is simplicity. Application development and data management are difficult enough under the constraints of modern IT, so businesses looking to implement a state-of-the-art distributed cloud architecture need the solution that is both effective and easy to understand.
Ready to rethink how you manage cloud workloads? Explore the possibilities of optimizing app performance in a distributed cloud setting.
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