Blog | nearby computing

A recent large-scale outage in a global cloud platform has once again revealed a fundamental vulnerability in our digital foundations: centralisation creates fragility.

When a single hyperscaler experiences a disruption in its control or networking layer, the consequences can cascade across thousands of dependent services — from enterprise systems to everyday consumer applications.

These incidents are not rare technical mishaps; they are symptoms of a structural imbalance in how we build and operate modern digital infrastructures.

The underlying issues:

R Single points of orchestration: Many services still rely on a single, centralised control plane for coordination.

R Complex dependencies: Layered abstractions make it difficult to isolate and mitigate failures quickly.

R Limited autonomy: When control is lost at the top, downstream services often cannot act independently.

R Data and latency constraints: Centralised clouds may struggle to meet the demands of real-time, data-intensive operations closer to users.

The result is an increasingly evident truth: the bigger and more centralised the system, the broader the impact when it fails.

Why Distribution Is the Key to Resilience

Resilience is not just about redundancy — it’s about autonomy and adaptability.
A distributed digital ecosystem, where orchestration and intelligence are spread across multiple layers, can continue functioning even when part of the system fails.

In such architectures:

R Edge nodes can operate independently, maintaining service continuity when connectivity to the core is lost.

R Workloads can dynamically shift between environments based on performance, availability, or policy.

R Local decision-making reduces dependency on distant control planes and mitigates global disruptions.

This model transforms infrastructure from a rigid hierarchy into a federated network of cooperating systems, improving both agility and reliability.

How NearbyOne Enables a Distributed Approach

NearbyOne embodies this principle of decentralised resilience.
It acts as an agnostic orchestrator, unifying control across cloud, data centre, and edge environments — without locking organisations into a single provider or technology stack.

Through automation and intent-based orchestration, NearbyOne enables:

R End-to-end visibility and governance across heterogeneous infrastructures.

R Local autonomy and failover, allowing sites to operate even if connectivity to a cloud provider is interrupted.

R Dynamic workload placement, optimising resources and maintaining performance across environments.

R Lifecycle management for both applications and network functions, ensuring operational consistency at scale.

By decoupling orchestration from any single cloud, NearbyOne helps organisations avoid systemic outages, enhance service continuity, and regain sovereignty over where and how their workloads run.

Building the Next Generation of Digital Infrastructure

The path forward is not about rejecting hyperscalers — it’s about rebalancing the architecture.
Global clouds will remain essential, but they must be complemented by distributed control, local intelligence, and hybrid operation models.

To achieve that, organisations should:

R Design for independence, not dependence.

R Embrace platforms that unify management across diverse environments.

R Bring compute, data, and decision-making closer to where value is created.

R Ensure continuity by design, not as an afterthought.

Conclusion

Outages at global scale are not anomalies — they are reminders of the limits of centralisation.
They show why the future of digital infrastructure depends on a shift from cloud-centric to networked, orchestrated, and distributed systems.

With an agnostic platform like NearbyOne, organisations can evolve towards a model where efficiency and resilience coexist — where operations continue even when the core falters.

Because in the new era of connectivity, true strength lies in distribution, not concentration.