Edge compute — the idea of executing logic close to users, rather than in a central system — is at the stone age of its history. What we consider cutting edge today is only the beginning; with new products like Amazon Lambda, the idea of pushing logic to the edge of the network has started to become more mainstream. However, the big innovations are yet to come. What would it take to build complete, complex applications at the edge? What new, state-of-the-art tools and concepts would we need? We will discuss where the edge is heading over the next several years, some ideas for what it could look like, and how it could fundamentally change the way you build applications.
Tyler McMullen is CTO of Fastly, where he is responsible for the system architecture and leads the company’s technology vision. As part of the founding team, Tyler built the first versions of Fastly’s instant purging system, API, and real-time analytics. Before Fastly, Tyler worked on text analysis and recommendations at Scribd. A self-described technology curmudgeon, Tyler has experience in everything from web design to kernel development and loathes all of it. Especially distributed systems.
