The distributed cloud may be defined as the distribution of public cloud services to different physical locations. In contrast, operation, governance, updates, and the evolution of the services are the responsibility of the originating public cloud provider.
Distributed cloud computing is a style of cloud computing where the location of the cloud services is a critical component of the model. Historically, the location has not been relevant to cloud computing definitions, although issues related to it are essential in many situations. While many people claim that a private cloud or hybrid cloud requires on-premises computing, this is a misconception.
A private cloud can be done in a hosted data center or, more often, in virtual individual cloud instances, which are not on-premises. Likewise, the hybrid cloud does not require that the individual components of the hybrid are in any specific location. However, with the advent of distributed cloud, location formally enters the definition of a style of cloud services.
Distributed cloud supports the tethered and untethered operation of like-for-like cloud services from the public cloud “distributed” out to specific and varied physical locations. This enables an essential characteristic of distributed cloud operation — low-latency compute where the to compute operations for the cloud services are closer to those who need the capabilities. This can result in major upgrades in performance and reduce the risk of global network-related outages.
