Explained: What is distributed cloud?

The concept of distributed cloud, like could computing itself, is not entirely new. But it reached new heights of research and usage in 2020 while the world was trying to find effective and not too expensive ways of staying connected. Distributed cloud is a trending research field now, and companies like IBM and VMware are vying with each other to grab the market as service providers. Since this concept is destined to have deep effects on future tech, and is already entering use, let’s learn a bit about it.  

What does distributed cloud mean? 
Distributed cloud refers to the distribution of various publicly accessible cloud services to physical locations anywhere; while the operation, administration, updating and general maintenance of these services remain the responsibility of the public cloud provider.  
Distributed cloud is a public cloud computing service, that means we can run and access the cloud infrastructure in multiple different locations, not just with the provider we have signed up with, but also in other cloud providers’ data centres. Imagine managing education, gaming and research from 3 separate service providers from a single control panel on your computer, that’s what distributed cloud can do.  

Where will distributed cloud definitely work? 
Any real-time application where latency is crucial will probably shift to distributed cloud in the long run. That includes VR classrooms, mobile gaming, and a lot of entertainment distribution. Since most businesses operate across multiple locations and providers, financial services would also rely heavily on distributed cloud. Yes, our banking networks may shift to it.  

What are the futuristic services that may use distributed cloud?  
While distributed cloud sounds far-off now, we have to keep in mind that the USB port and the World Wide Web (www) were also ‘futuristic’ not too long ago. A lot of gadgets using the Internet of Things (including all our smart speakers and connected health bands), higher education classrooms and globally scattered project teams would start using this tech sooner or later. 5G mobile services are already shifting towards this. Smart cities, i.e. metro cities on a shared public network would also be using distributed cloud.