They say it will be cloudy tomorrow! But it’s not about the weather and overhanging clouds in the sky at all. FinTech solutions are growing fast nowadays. How do you meet all business needs under cloud conditions? Such a high rate of upgrades exponentially increases the need for privacy and demand for access points from any part of the world.

Today we’ll talk about the distributed cloud — a computing technology taking the FinTech industry companies to the next level.

What Does Distributed Cloud Mean?

A grid computing is a collection of networked computers that share a workload equally. At the same time, neither the number of computers, nor the distance between them is limited. The main difference between cloud computing and grid computing is that cloud functions comprise software and other infrastructure resources over the Internet. Grid computing distributes a single task across the boundaries of computers connected over a network to complete the task faster than using separate devices. But distributed cloud does it even faster.

Distributed in this context means that something is shared among multiple systems, which may also be in different locations while still being controlled by the same provider.

The model’s key advantages include: controlling distributed physical locations; eliminating operational and management issues; inaccuracies in hybrid-cloud or multi-cloud infrastructures.

However, cloud technologies are not technologies at all, not nor a product, nor even a way of delivering services. It is a style of data management. By a simple comparison, this is like carrying groceries in the supermarket in your hands – or picking up a basket to make shopping easier. You pick up and put your purchases in the shopping cart without asking anybody’s permission.

Evolution of cloud computing capabilities

All technologies are a result of public and hybrid cloud models symbiosis, striving for edge computing technology.

In the public cloud model, multiple customers share access to required services. A provider owns and governs the data centers with the customer’s running workloads and the underlying virtualization software. Cloud providers take responsibility for all hardware, infrastructure maintenance and appropriate network connectivity for accelerated access to apps and data.

Customers mainly use public clouds to extend their present IT resources and avoid growing physical IT infrastructures.

The hybrid cloud model suggests the integration of public, private, and on-premise infrastructure. The cloud provider ensures governance, orchestration, management, and application mobility across all 3 elements responsible for the cloud public environment. The customer controls the private cloud setting.

The model is popular with businesses undergoing digital transformation without sufficient resources to maintain a private cloud. Companies that maintain and manage sensitive data not intended for the public cloud are also using the hybrid model.

Edge computing solves critical tasks in processing as close to the data root as possible to decrease latency and cut bandwidth usage. The cloud provider is responsible for running fewer processes. The other more critical functions are shifted to local sites, such as computers, IoT devices, or edge servers.

The edge computing model is essential for enterprises that run time-sensitive data and processes requiring minimal latency and immediate response.

Gartner has analyzed and predicted that end-user spending on public cloud services will grow 21.7 % to $ 482 billion in 2022.

Source: Gartner Research (August, 2021)

Under these conditions, public cloud spending will surpass 45% of all corporate IT spending in 2021. This indicates the knowledgeable consumption of the cloud and the misgivings of the users.

How Does Distributed Cloud Change Your Business?

Are you “cloud-washing?” Top-rated question of 2021/22. Businesses don’t have to upgrade the hardware of computers to support high performance, bother configuring complex systems or buy expensive software packages, while saving on electricity bills and more. Let’s take a look at the main benefits of the distributed cloud for businesses.

Secures a higher performance

Thanks to the system’s ability to use the computational power of multiple computers, the calculation speed of distributed cloud platforms is higher than of other systems. Besides, the technology allows for more responsive communication, moving requests to services physically closer to data.

Builds resilience

While distributed cloud model implies having smaller allocated units, it diminishes the impact of server failures and cuts the necessity to invest into a spare capacity. Thus, the model allows businesses to handle failure risks in the most cost-efficient way.

Reduces latency

Services become faster and more responsive as critical processing tasks are allocated closer to end-users. Since there’s no need to transmit data back to centralized network servers, the technology improves response time through cutting traffic.

Enhances autonomy and security

As a client’s company owns essential computational and storage resources, it obtains a higher level of control and protection by observing all the infrastructure via the controlling layer.

Upgrades network scalability

The distributed nature allows for scalable capacity wherever requested. Applications and services are operated on different servers, so the structure allows users to add or remove resources without rebuilding the whole cloud infrastructure.

Increases resource efficiency

Technology allows reducing reduce the operational costs through repetition and dependability of processes. Besides, a cloud provider manages all the cloud infrastructure, operations, security, and updates. So a client’s company doesn’t have to allocate a dedicated team and can use its talent resources elsewhere.

Manages regulatory-compiled data

The distributed cloud location implies building services on policy-controlled local storage. It enables businesses to follow regulatory requirements, under which data must be stored and processed within a particular nation-state, regional, or business facility.

Examples of Distributed Cloud Implementation

What niches are adopting distributed cloud more than others? Let’s consider how some industries use the distributed cloud model.

• FinTech services. The distributed cloud model was meant to support this industry — fintech companies use low latency and fast data processing for transaction time. It helps to take over their competitors. Fintech companies operate critical data within a particular territory. Personal data is more safely secured if compared to other architectures.
• IoT, ML, and AI-enabled solutions. Such applications can only rely on real-time data, without waiting for delivery to the central data center and back. So they take advantage of low latency cloud technology.
• Critical infrastructure facilities. Factories and power stations require the maximum level of security and resilience. They leverage distributed clouds to ensure the highest level of control and reduce failure risks or impacts.

As we see, the distributed cloud network is a rather beneficial architecture; and much good can come from this technology. Time will show whether it will develop and what industries it will cover.

CHI Software is a development company specializing in mobile and web applications, cloud solutions, and many other areas. We pride ourselves on being a Certified Cloud Consulting Partner and delivering solutions to the challenges of your business on an expert level.

If you have any questions about implementing cloud solutions, contact us via the link.

And don’t forget, it will be cloudy tomorrow!