More Power at the Edge: Introducing Distributed Compute Regions
For edge-native applications, performance is closely tied to the location of cloud services. Application infrastructure’s proximity to the end user is one of the first evaluations developers make when considering how to reduce latency. Global organizations and companies looking to reach customers in regions that are underserved by historically centralized cloud providers are often stuck with suboptimal workarounds with local providers, or simply accept that some of their products and services will consistently have poor performance or simply be unusable for some users.
Our long history as a CDN provider has allowed us to establish relationships with edge data centers. Akamai saw the opportunity to bring powerful, production-ready cloud computing services to select Akamai edge locations in the form of a new type of cloud computing region: Distributed Compute Regions. Now, organizations can geographically extend application infrastructure in 10 major metros across the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania.
Developers and technical architects are regularly tasked with what seems like the impossible: build and maintain an application for a latency-sensitive use case (like live media streaming or gaming) while processing enormous quantities of data, and while prioritizing lowering cloud infrastructure spend. Finding the right strategy, partnering with the best technical providers, and maximizing ROI is today’s herculean technical challenge.
