The document discusses the complexities of current cloud infrastructures and the evolution towards edge computing, emphasizing the need for vertical integration and a seamless cloud-to-edge continuum. It highlights the growing importance of edge computing in various industries, predicting significant growth in enterprise-generated data being processed at the edge by 2025. The author advocates for a new programming model that supports both cloud-native and edge-native application development to simplify operations and improve efficiency.

1. Tackling the
The Cloud to Edge
Continuum
Jonas Bonér
@jboner

2. Today’s
Cloud Infrastructure is
Great

3. Today’s
Cloud Infrastructure is
Complex

4. …the options
can be
overwhelming
CNCF: Cloud Native Interactive Landscape - https://landscape.cncf.io/

5. Are You Stuck
with an enterprise stack
where you have to manage
Everything Yourself?
Load Balancer
Ingress Router
Cache Cache
Your App Your App
Event Broker
Database Database
Cache Cache
Your App Your App
Event Broker
Database Database

6. The Promise of the
Serverless DX
is Revolutionary

7. ZeroOps
Means Less
Complexity
Your Function
Your Function
Your Function
Your Function
Cache
Database
Event Broker

8. …but can quickly
become a complex
integration project
Even if all
the APIs are
Serverless
themselves

9. Can we do be
tt
er?
What lies beyond Serverless?

10. The need for Vertical Integration
There are already too many primitives for engineers to deeply
understand and manage them all, and more arrive by the day.
And even if that were not the case, there is too little upside for the
overwhelming majority of organizations to select, implement,
integrate, operate and secure every last component or service.
Time spent managing enterprise infrastructure minutiae is time not
spent building out its own business.
“
Stephen O’Grady, RedMonk
Vertical Integration: The Collision
of App Platforms and Database

11. Civilization advances by extending the
number of important operations which we
can perform without thinking of them.
“
Alfred North Whitehead

12. Self-Managed On-Prem
Application
Business Logic
Frameworks
Database
Transport
Security
Infrastructure
Kubernetes
Operating System
Virtualization
Servers, Storage,
Networking
In the Cloud
Kubernetes
Operating System
Virtualization
Servers, Storage,
Networking
Application
Business Logic
Frameworks
Database
Transport
Security
Infrastructure
What We Need
Application
Business Logic
Frameworks
Database
Transport
Security
Kubernetes
Operating System
Virtualization
Servers, Storage,
Networking
Infrastructure
From Serverless to Databaseless
Managed by Cloud /
Service Provider
Customer
Managed

13. Edge Computing
Edge Computing is actually being implemented today in many
of our clients’ environments, […] enabling entirely new
applications and data models.
Simply put, Edge has moved from concept and hype into
successful vertical industry implementations, with general
purpose platform status approaching rapidly.
“
Bob Gill
Gartner (Oct. 2021)

14. The Edge is already here
• Telco, Cloud, and CDN companies are building out the infrastructure
• 5G and Local-first software is changing the game
• Customers demand that we move data and compute closer to end-user—
for lower latency, better availability, and more advanced use-cases
• We are moving beyond edge computing—towards stateful and a holistic
view on data and compute
• Huge market on the rise: $4.6B in 2020 to $61.1B (CAGR 38.4%) - Gartner
It’s just not fully leveraged

15. Edge use-cases
• Autonomous vehicles
• Retail & E-commerce
• Trading systems
• Health care
• Emergency services
• Factories
• Stadium events
(sport, concerts)
• Gaming
• Farming
• Financial services
• Smart homes
• And more…

16. Tsunami Warning
• Gartner predicts that by 2025, 75% of enterprise-generated data
will be created & processed on the Edge (10% today)
• This requires:
• Keeping as much data on the Edge as possible
• Move processing to the Edge
• Benefits:
• Real-time processing, lower latency, faster answers
• Resilient, not relying on stable connection to cloud
• More resource efficient, less data shipping
https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/what-edge-computing-means-for-infrastructure-and-operations-leaders

17. Hierarchical Layers
from Cloud to Device
Opportunities
and limitations
Further out (towards devices):
• 10,000s to 100,000s of PoPs to coordinate
• Unreliable networks & hardware
• Limited resources & compute power
• Real-time, low latency processing
• Needs weaker consistency/guarantees
• Local, faster, less accurate decisions
• More resilient & available
• Requires
fi
ne-grained data replication
and mobility
Further in (towards cloud):
• 10s to 1000s of nodes to coordinate
• Reasonably reliable networks & hardware
• Vast resources & compute power
• Batch, high latency processing
• Allows stronger consistency/guarantees
• Global, slower, but “better” decisions
• Less resilient & available
• Coarse-grained data replication possible,
data can be stationary

18. Technical Requirements
• Autonomous self-organising components
• Physical co-location of data, compute, end-user
• Intelligent and adaptive placement of data, compute, end-user
• Local-first cooperation (function just fine without backend cloud)
• Fine-grained and adaptive replication (row-level)
• Consistency a la carte—Eventual, Causal, Strong
• Options for “state models” (“shapes”)—SQL, Event Sourcing, CRDTs,
Views, Streaming
• End-to-end guarantees of SLAs, business rules, and data integrity

19. My vision of a
• Cloud to Edge is a continuum
• Powering location transparent services that can run anywhere
–from public Cloud to 100,000 of PoPs at the Edge
• Should not be a design, development, or even deployment decision
• Data always exists wherever and whenever needed, and only for the time it is needed
• Data and compute moves adaptively, together with the end-user
• Data is always co-located with processing and end-user
—ensuring ultra low latency, high throughput and resilience
• Data is injected into the services on an as-needed basis
—automatically, timely, efficiently, and intelligently
Cloud to Edge Data Plane

20. Freedom is not so much the absence
of restrictions as finding the right
ones, the liberating restrictions.
“
Timothy Keller

21. Distilling the Ultimate
Cloud to Edge Programming Model
1. Data model
• How to model the business data
• Its structure, constraints, guarantees, and query model
2. API
• How to communicate/coordinate services and outside world
3. Business logic
• How to mine intelligence, act, and operate on the data
• Transform, downsample, relay, and trigger side-effects
• Using work
fl
ow, point-to-point, pub-sub, streaming, broadcast
The rest can (and should) be fully managed and automated
by the underlying platform
3 things we as developers can never delegate:

22. • Fully managed developer PaaS—for building real-time event-driven Cloud Native
and Edge Native applications
• Beyond Serverless—abstracts away ALL infrastructure into a single declarative
programming model (DB, event broker, cache, API gateway, service mesh, security, …)
• Polyglot—use it from Java, Javascript, Typescript, Scala, Python, Go, and more
• Unifies Cloud Native and Edge Native development in a Cloud-to-Edge Data Plane
• Reactive at its core—low latency, high throughput, always available, adaptive scaling,
co-location of data and compute (built on Akka, gRPC, Kubernetes)

23. Application
Business Logic
Frameworks
Database
Transport
Security
Infrastructure
Kubernetes
Operating System
Virtualization
Servers, Storage,
Networking
Kalix
Kubernetes
Operating System
Virtualization
Servers, Storage,
Networking
Application
Business Logic
Frameworks
Database
Transport
Security
Infrastructure
Application
Business Logic
Frameworks
Database
Transport
Security
Kubernetes
Operating System
Virtualization
Servers, Storage,
Networking
Infrastructure
Vertical Integration As a Service
Managed by Cloud /
Service Provider
Customer
Managed

24. How do you build a service?
3
2
1
State model
API description Business logic

25. Step 1: Define API and data
service ShoppingCart {
rpc AddItem(AddLineItem) returns (google.protobuf.Empty) {
option (google.api.http) = {
post: "/ShoppingCart/cart/{user_id}/items/add",
body: "*",
};
}
…
}
message AddLineItem {
string user_id = 1 [(kalix.field).entity_key = true];
string product_id = 2;
}
option (kalix.method).eventing = {
in: { event_log: "shopping-cart" }
out: { topic: "shopping-cart-events" }
};
Schema-
fi
rst: Declarative con
fi
guration in Protobuf

26. Step 2: Define state model
option (kalix.codegen) = {
value_entity: {
…
}
}
rpc GetCarts(GetCartsRequest) returns (stream Carts) {
option (kalix.method).view = {
query: "select * from carts where userid = :userid"
};
}
…
option (kalix.codegen) = {
event_sourced_entity: {
…
}
}
option (google.api.http) = {
get: "/carts"
};

27. Step 3: Write business logic
// Tie the gRPC service to a JS function
entity.setBehavior(cart => {
return {
commandHandlers: {
AddItem: addItem,
}
});
// Business logic
function addItem(addItem, cart, ctx) {
console.log("addItem", addItem);
}
Event
State
Context
Event and State injected into the function
Choose language and write the function

28. State is injected into the function on an as-needed basis
Event In
User Function
Deployment
Event Out
State In State Out

29. If the Function manages the state, It is A
Black BoX
To the runtime
The Problem

30. The Problem
Unconstrained database access
Makes it hard to Automate
operations

31. Under the hood
Execution cluster
Project
Service
State proxy User code
Linkerd

32. In Summary
Cloud development is too complex
• Serverless is promising, but currently falls short
• We need to continue to climb the ladder of abstractions
• We need Vertical Integration not an integration project
Edge Computing is already here
• Opens up a new world of possibilities and challenges
• We need to see Cloud and Edge as a continuum
• Apps soon need to be both Cloud Native and Edge Native
• We need to a new Programming Model and DX
designed to serve this Cloud to Edge continuum
Kalix is here to help:
• Polyglot, real-time, event-driven, reactive, zero-ops PaaS
• Adaptive, resilient, and scalable Cloud-to-Edge Data Plane
• Use it in the Cloud today, but be ready for future Edge use-cases

33. Thank You
Learn more at kalix.io