The Edge

Which finally brings us to the edge. The servers that are closer to the user location, they’re computers too, so they can execute logic..! ✨

While all this cache stuff was evolving, cloud and serverless computing also emerged, meaning website providers no longer need to manage their own servers, and can leverage resources that are allocated dynamically.

As website builders we can carry out processing at the edge, which means we can shift parts of the functionality of a site closer to the user.

Maybe we tailor the content to the region the user lives in, or to other information we learn about them – it helps us to customize the user experience, without having to send the relevant data all the way to the origin and back. We can even build entire applications that run on the edge and don't need to fetch content from origins at all.

These advances make the whole network more efficient. They can improve accessibility, by reducing the amount of bandwidth required to engage on the web, for example if you live somewhere with restricted connectivity.

Edge computing has the power to stimulate a shift in how we center the user experience in the decisions we make when we build applications.

If you're working on a large scale website, this technology can make it faster and more secure, as well as saving your organization a lot of money. But the potential of edge computing is so much more than that – what it can do is up to you, let's build the future of the web! 🚀