Cloud infrastructure forms the foundation of much of the modern digital world. Today, most developers, businesses, and even government agencies rely on providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure to provide storage and hosting solutions for their data and applications.
But with the emergence of blockchain technology, a new model of cloud solutions is emerging. That model is a decentralized cloud infrastructure. Blockchain technology promises to change how developers and businesses host their apps, websites, and data on the Internet.
Decentralized cloud infrastructure vs the current model
There are many companies providing cloud services. The biggest of these is AWS with a
This means that the current dominant model is centralized. The user might have their information and application running on multiple servers. However, that’s just for redundancy in case some of the servers go down. It doesn’t equal decentralization because all the servers are still controlled by one company which is the entity providing the services.
A decentralized cloud infrastructure provider takes a different approach. Rather than building the platform on infrastructure owned by one person or company, it spreads it out across different nodes (servers) owned by different people. That way, the cloud infrastructure is decentralized and no one has complete control over the platform.
Why decentralized cloud infrastructure is important
Decentralization via blockchain provides solutions to some of the problems that arise due to the centralization of cloud infrastructure.
Take security for instance. Centralized cloud infrastructure provides a single point of failure. This makes targeted attacks on the system easier to plan and execute. As a result, data breaches occur
In a decentralized system, different parts of the underlying infrastructure are managed by different people spread out across the world. This makes executing targeted attacks much more difficult.
Closely related to this are the issues of control and privacy. Centralization puts the data and applications stored/running on the cloud under the control of the company providing the services.
The providers often use data analytics to go over this data in order to improve their services. While this is reportedly done in good faith, some of this data is sensitive, making the action unnecessarily intrusive.
Decentralized cloud infrastructure doesn’t allow for this to happen. No one has complete control and custody of the user’s data and therefore, the authority to look at and analyze it.
There is also the issue of reliability. If a centralized provider experiences a big-enough outage, apps and websites running on its cloud infrastructure will go down.
Of course, this doesn’t occur often with big providers like AWS and Microsoft Azure. But among the smaller providers, which account for about 30% of the market, it's not that uncommon.
Decentralization avoids this problem because one, the spread-out infrastructure minimizes the odds of a debilitating outage occurring. And two, blockchain protocols are designed so that even if several nodes go down, the event will not affect the running of the protocol. The remaining nodes are still able to maintain the system.
Finally, there is the cost. In the current centralized model, the company is solely responsible for the purchase and maintenance of its infrastructure. Factoring in the labor, rent, and other associated costs, this becomes an expensive undertaking. Therefore, they typically charge a higher price, like AWS, which starts at $29 per month.
Decentralization has the potential to make cloud services cheaper and thus, more accessible. This is because the cost of buying and maintaining the cloud infrastructure is spread out across different node holders. Therefore, the provider can afford to charge a lower price for its services.
Overall, decentralized cloud infrastructure will bring much-needed improvements to the industry. Better still, it's not wishful thinking that is a decade away. Decentralized cloud infrastructure is already here.
Decentralized cloud infrastructure today
However, the protocol doesn’t provide a full range of cloud services. It acts as more of a storage solution than anything else and thus, doesn’t offer much direct competition to legacy cloud providers. A better example of the current state of decentralized cloud infrastructure and its potential would be Flux.
Flux is a platform that aims to provide an efficient and scalable alternative to traditional cloud infrastructure providers. Built on top it is designed to provide a decentralized way to host applications, websites, and also data storage through their decentralized InterPlanetary File System (IPFS).
The project recently added WordPress to its platform, making it the first ever fully decentralized WordPress hosting service.
The service will allow business owners and developers to easily deploy and run their WordPress websites on its' decentralized cloud infrastructure. They can do so anonymously thanks to the option to pay in crypto. As a result, users will enjoy the reliability, cost-effectiveness, and privacy that come with decentralized cloud hosting.
A decentralized future
Platforms like Filecoin and Flux are proof that the future of cloud infrastructure, or at least part of it, will be decentralized. The benefits that this model brings to the industry will attract a lot of developers, businesses, and other kinds of customers, weakening the hold that the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have over the world’s information.
The featured image was generated with stable diffusion v2.1
Prompt: Illustrate a decentralized cloud.