Some more on how we think about edge computing and the serverless market: https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-workers-serverless-we...
When they expect dedicated CPUs and memory, they're suddenly going to price shop across cloud providers and won't pay enough to make those same margins.
Presumably the thinking behind this approach is that it allows them to advertise cheap instance costs and storage costs, while still making bank, assuming the customer's traffic volumes are non-negotiable?
Also has the effect of lowering prices for casual dabblers, who might want to play about with what's on offer without moving much traffic.
Assuming that Hetzner's 1 EUR/TB isn't losing them money, AWS's 50-90 USD/TB should put the margin at 98% plus.
Agree it's stealth protectionism and security overreach. But do data sovereignty laws really form the basis of an inevitable future federated internet? Trade agreements like CPPTPA and USAMCA seem to prohibit. Or restrict sensitive finance or health data. And most users of consumer internet apps like TikTok aren't too concerned. They just want fresh memes ;)
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The idea that the Internet is universally global and where your data is doesn't matter is idealistic fiction, not reality.
Freedom to store and process in more logical, secure and efficient places is a good thing.
Which is to say, the only parties that benefit from being able to store your data in other countries is often global monopolies shifting your data to where they have the least legal oversight.
Forcing data to be stored within borders just makes it harder, more expensive, and more inefficient to serve more customers for no real security benefit. And a company with illegitimate operations isn't going to be following these guidelines anyway.
Why do you say so? There's nothing technically stopping a teleco to add extra nodes there, use 10% for themselves and rent out the remaining 90% resources.
There's also security; they can't just store/process customer certificates on minimally secured boxes on street corners. Just about any useful code requires some kind of cert or secret or connection string somewhere. Cloud providers require all sorts of physical security restrictions, guards, cameras, sharks with lasers and such in order to host these things.
The way it's working now is telcos are outsourcing it to the cloud providers, and cloud providers are sticking racks in the carriers' metro hubs (with shark/laser requirements). These racks show up like mini regions in cloud providers' portals, so users can deploy VM's there just like any other region. Much lower barrier to entry that way.
Maybe someday you'll get sub-microsecond latency on custom apps from some box hanging on your street, but that's not coming anytime soon AFAIK.
They are already doing that for their own code, no reason any CRUD app would behave much differently than teleco code. In fact teleco code has much higher SLO than regular web services.
> There's also security; they can't just store/process customer certificates on minimally secured boxes on street corners. Just about any useful code requires some kind of cert or secret or connection string somewhere.
Already solved problem by using SDS for mutual TLS.
> The way it's working now is telcos are outsourcing it to the cloud providers, and cloud providers are sticking racks in the carriers' metro hubs (with shark/laser requirements). These racks show up like mini regions in cloud providers' portals, so users can deploy VM's there just like any other region.
Do you have any source for this? Which cloud is providing such services and with which teleco?
Edit: https://www.fiercewireless.com/5g/verizon-partners-aws-to-br... Looks like it isn't farfetched, AWS is already teaming up with Verizon to provide this.
Interestingly when I took my job I also thought we were going to be deploying to every intersection, and was a bit disappointed when I found that the reality was much less interesting.
And just so you know, no the security angle is huge. Something like SDS may be fine for some purposes, but if there is anything valuable resident in memory or running over PCIE or whatever else, side channel attacks are real and people will steal them. Look up some hacks people do just to cheat at Xbox, it's insane. If you can't prove you're secure against that, you'll never get big money customers on your platform. Currently that still means sharks with laser beams.
So basically all the classic benefits of serverless and edge computing would apply, the difference being we would need some more drivers, python libraries and a GPU attached.