Enhance Your Hybrid Cloud Strategy with a New “Edge”

Large cloud providers are not highly distributed. In other words, they tend to have large data centers for specific regions. This may not sound like a big deal, but globally in areas with weaker Internet backbones or cases requiring minimal latency, this can come at a large cost. These centralized data centers may have been the right solution at the time they were implemented, but they no longer serve modern data management needs, and the lack of distribution produces serious challenges related to latency and cost. Now, more than ever, it’s important to implement a distributed application (or “hybrid cloud” strategy), by deploying the edge closer to the end-user instead of pinging a large data center thousands of miles away. Instead of being restricted to one solution, hybrid cloud strategies allow companies to distribute and rotate workloads between different cloud solutions based on changing costs and needs.

Even when organizations do recognize that their cloud strategy needs a reboot, due to factors like vendor lock-in or limited resources, it’s not always a simple fix. Harper is one solution that’s enabling true hybrid cloud strategy, ultimately solving latency and distribution issues by taking advantage of the edge.

The Problem—Cloud Data Management Challenges

Companies today are facing unique challenges when it comes to cloud data management, resulting in genuine concerns:

• Technology leaders are afraid of vendor lock-in
• Most data management solutions are cloud specific (DynamoDB, Cosmos DB, Aurora, etc.)
• There are large expenses around data ingress and egress
• Cloud is not highly distributed, causing major latency in certain regions
• Low latency, multi-cloud disaster recovery is complex and expensive

Due to the rapid growth and adoption of the cloud, it was difficult to predict these distribution challenges, and even more difficult to avoid them. Many database-as-a-service (DBaaS) offerings are specific to one cloud provider, which may seem fine at the outset of a project or two, but rapidly becomes cumbersome and restrictive over time. This model locks the cloud provider’s customers into one infrastructure, which prevents redundancy and cost savings. Additionally, because large cloud providers are not highly distributed, many locations that are not near their specific provider’s data center will experience latency issues. If you are unable to meet high-speed data transfer or access needs, your customers might find a different product or solution that does.

To be clear—the cloud does not have to be this complicated or costly! The cloud is an incredible invention that has advanced many aspects of life and business, and when done correctly with a hybrid cloud solution, it provides an unparalleled competitive advantage in the marketplace. The good news is—there’s a solution that won’t break the bank or disrupt your productivity. Harper is working with companies in industries such as energy, manufacturing / production, telecom, and healthcare, to fix these cloud data management issues and avoid them moving forward.

The Solution—Why Harper?

• Harper runs anywhere, presenting a single interface across a multi-cloud solution
• There are no costs for data ingress or egress
• Can run on public cloud, edge data centers, on-premise, and/or in the field
• Provides low latency edge data replication, think “CDN of database”
• Harper reduces latency by distributing the cloud to the edge

Harper is one technology focused on activating a combined edge/cloud solution. With flexible deployment options, you can avoid vendor lock-in and truly run your database anywhere. Harper can be deployed on any combination of cloud providers, data centers, and/or edge devices, and anything in between. Additionally, all of those Harper nodes can communicate with each other (assuming some sort of network connectivity), enabling organizations to create a strong hybrid cloud. Harper’s powerful single endpoint REST API provides a simple to use interface everywhere it is deployed, ultimately simplifying workload and reducing application complexity.

Edge data centers are the culmination of this hybrid edge/cloud solution. Instead of having a limited choice of regions offered by giant cloud providers, edge data centers are much closer to their end consumer. For example, I live in Denver, Colorado, and if I were to be using a truly distributed application, I would be hitting a local data center also located in Denver, instead of a massive field of data centers located in Virginia. This strategy reduces latency and spend, allowing organizations to utilize a combination of the edge and the cloud that best serves their unique needs. With solutions like Harper’s hybrid cloud, you now have the ability to take what you love about the cloud and move it to the edge—extending the cloud closer to where you are. This flexible multi-cloud strategy will greatly improve the end-user experience.

Innovation—From the Ground Up

Harper’s storage engine enables ACID compliance on each node and efficient storage and retrieval, since all attributes are universally indexed by default.

Harper’s dynamic schema enables ingestion of any type of data at scale. This frees you from the hassle of defining schema data types ahead of time, which provides unlimited flexibility as your applications evolve and scale over time. Scaling is easy with Harper’s clustering and replication features, and the data model, built on top of LMDB, enables rapid read and write speeds. The Harper data management solution is unlocking actual real-time data for applications, ultimately leading to a better end-user experience, all while supporting your reporting and analysis needs. You can now reallocate important resources, and focus on business productivity and advancement instead of administration and maintenance.

It’s important to implement a hybrid edge/cloud strategy to help you stay competitive (or keep you afloat) in a world with increasing demands for lightning-fast data transfer. Change is inevitable, and while it may be tough to predict what the data landscape will look like in the years ahead, you’ll most likely want a modern data management solution that provides unparalleled flexibility and cost savings.

Original Post (leave comments and feedback!): https://dev.to/margo_hdb/enhance-your-hybrid-cloud-strategy-with-a-new-edge-36c4