From centralized to distributed: why cloud architecture had to change

Where we are today is not hybrid cloud rebranded. Hybrid was a transition strategy. Distributed is an entirely new operating environment, where cloud infrastructure and services are physically located in multiple, dispersed environments: on-premise data centers, multiple public clouds, edge locations, and sovereign zones. Yet they are managed as a single, cohesive system. Unlike centralized or hybrid approaches, distributed cloud treats geographic and architectural diversity as a feature, not a compromise.

This shift happened gradually. Organizations reacted to new regulatory frameworks like GDPR and FedRAMP, which enforce data locality and privacy standards that centralized architectures can’t always support. Meanwhile, latency-sensitive applications, like real-time analytics, pulled compute closer to the user, pushing cloud computing infrastructure to the edge. And cost became a concern: 66% of engineers report disruptions in their workflows due to lack of visibility into cloud spend, with 22% saying the impact is equivalent ...