Thursday 29 July 2010
It takes more time to fetch data when a request has to leave the LAN, and latency is usually variable and at the mercy of both the Interwebs and the cloud provider. This isn’t so much of an issue when your entire app is deployed in the cloud and users are going directly there for data; the user won’t notice any difference between accessing your app after it’s moved to AWS than they did when you had it deployed in your own data center. In fact some times it might even be faster. The latency monster rears its ugly head when apps are spread across data centers, either in a split architecture or with bursting, where the user is first directed to your local data center and then a decision is made to move that request to the cloud portion of the app.
But what about a hybrid model, the Cloud Franchise: local owners and operators that offer local cloud services but also offer branch versions of the larger cloud options. Some of this model exists in the platform levels today, in fact there is a thriving marketplace for start-ups who are offering AWS-based solutions, pre-packaged and ready to go. If I have latency concerns about bouncing my users from one part of my app in my private Missoula data center to another part of my app located in Baltimore, then a pre-packaged AWS solution won’t really help me with that. I want all parts of my app to be as local as possible, especially when I need to burst into or direct users to the cloud.
