nuu:bit, the advanced CDN company, recently announced its new Distributed Compute Environment (DCE). The nuu:bit DCE is designed to allow the execution of code at the network edge closest to the end user, aiming to make the development and deployment of applications quicker and more affordable.
Serverless is emerging as a major new force in compute services, offering speed and lower costs in developing applications than current solutions. There is increasing demand for higher speed of development amidst a competitive landscape and ever-evolving technologies. However, manual, often fragmented processes can make it difficult for developers to achieve such speed without errors.
The nuu:bit serverless DCE platform is a global serverless computing platform “that pushes application logic closer to end users allowing you to develop and deploy your applications faster”. Developers do not need to predetermine how much storage and database capacity is needed ahead of deployment, which can slow the process down significantly. nuu:bit also promises that DCE allows developers to place their focus on developing and delivering apps instead of having to “worry about managing, provisioning and maintaining servers when deploying code”.
For legacy applications, the DCE platform aims to improve performance for the end user and reduce backend costs by distributing the processing on a global basis.
Key features of the new platform include:
- The advantages of the FaaS (Function as a Service) feature, such as “fast prototyping at a low price point”
- Support of Edge Side Includes (ESI)
- The potential to enable Software as a Service (SaaS) via Hosted Modules Saas, providing speed to market and new features in operation at a lower cost
- Automatic distribution and a user management framework that saves time when writing code by reducing the amount and complexity of code required to develop a SaaS feature
Function as a Service (Faas)
The new cloud computing model that the nuu:bit FaaS service offers allows developers to shrink the size of their custom code base and reduce the risks of bugs and vulnerabilities that are often lurking in single-tiered software applications. Smaller software components are more loosely coupled, making it harder for changes in one service to adversely impact other services that depend on it, thereby simplifying the process of orchestrating quick, incremental code changes. Furthermore because app logic is distributed, the system can easily scale.
Varnish VCL and Lua are both currently supported via nuu:bit.
Software to Service (SaaS)
The nuu:bit Hosted Modules feature makes it more straightforward to deploy a SaaS offering with a NGINX or Varnish module, including hosted custom modules. A granular analytics framework allows for instant visibility and straightforward monitoring of applications without additional development required. The managed platform reduces operational costs because of the smaller amount of code needed to develop a SaaS offering, in addition to savings offered by the automatic distribution component.
One of nuu:bit DCE’s first clients is ScientiaMobile who used it to develop ImageEngine, an image optimization service that quickly resizes and delivers images for mobile devices. Krishna Guda, CEO, said, “The traditional content delivery network model couldn’t put our device-aware resizing logic close enough to the network’s edge. By deploying on the nuu:bit platform, we immediately were able to drive fast performance and deliver an improved mobile user experience for our e-commerce customers.”