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Gotcha, honestly that feels pretty niche to me, which might be a good place for a startup to start. I can't think of many back-end applications between purely

by a13n 7y ago

Gotcha, honestly that feels pretty niche to me, which might be a good place for a startup to start. I can't think of many back-end applications between purely static content (just use a CDN) and needs a database connection. Probably video game servers, where you don't need the game state to be (immediately) stored/accessed globally.

mrkurt 7y ago
Game servers are a great example. What's interesting is how many different kinds of apps need game-server like infrastructure: https://www.figma.com/blog/how-figmas-multiplayer-technology-works/ https://www.figma.com/blog/how-figmas-multiplayer-technology... We've been talking to a lot of startups doing communications tools, especially for remote work. Lots of full stack apps benefit from app servers + redis cache in different regions. They need a database connection, but if they're already done the work to minimize DB round trips they might just work with no code changes. There are also a bunch of folks doing really dynamic video and image delivery. Where an individual user gets an entirely unique blob of binary data.
ShroudedNight 7y ago
I could see IoT device 'acceleration' to be a significant potential use-case. Something with a tiny bill of materials for the device itself, offloading any non-trivial processing to a virtual device on the closest 'real' infrastructure you can get. Especially for something human-interactive, you would want to be very aggressive about minimizing latency. Also, depending on how tight the limits are for VM lifetime / bandwidth / outbound connections, I could see using these as a kind of virtual NIC / service mesh type thing for consumer-grade internet connections, to restore the inbound routing capabilities precluded by carrier-grade NAT and avoid their traffic discrimination, as well as potentially on-boarding to higher-quality transit as early as possible for use when accessing latency-sensitive services further 'interior' to the cloud.
- mrkurt 7y ago
  These are great. IoT seems like a thing you could do but that's a really specific use case I hadn't even considered. The second example would be interesting to try. There's no real limit on VM lifetime or outbound connections, bandwidth is more of a budget problem. VMs are ephemeral, so they _can_ go away but we're all happier if they just run forever.

by a13n 7y ago

mrkurt 7y ago

Game servers are a great example. What's interesting is how many different kinds of apps need game-server like infrastructure: https://www.figma.com/blog/how-figmas-multiplayer-technology-works/ https://www.figma.com/blog/how-figmas-multiplayer-technology... We've been talking to a lot of startups doing communications tools, especially for remote work. Lots of full stack apps benefit from app servers + redis cache in different regions. They need a database connection, but if they're already done the work to minimize DB round trips they might just work with no code changes. There are also a bunch of folks doing really dynamic video and image delivery. Where an individual user gets an entirely unique blob of binary data.

ShroudedNight 7y ago

I could see IoT device 'acceleration' to be a significant potential use-case. Something with a tiny bill of materials for the device itself, offloading any non-trivial processing to a virtual device on the closest 'real' infrastructure you can get. Especially for something human-interactive, you would want to be very aggressive about minimizing latency. Also, depending on how tight the limits are for VM lifetime / bandwidth / outbound connections, I could see using these as a kind of virtual NIC / service mesh type thing for consumer-grade internet connections, to restore the inbound routing capabilities precluded by carrier-grade NAT and avoid their traffic discrimination, as well as potentially on-boarding to higher-quality transit as early as possible for use when accessing latency-sensitive services further 'interior' to the cloud.

mrkurt 7y ago
These are great. IoT seems like a thing you could do but that's a really specific use case I hadn't even considered. The second example would be interesting to try. There's no real limit on VM lifetime or outbound connections, bandwidth is more of a budget problem. VMs are ephemeral, so they _can_ go away but we're all happier if they just run forever.