Complex applications. Even with applications that require real-time database transactions, running presentation layer components of the application on the edge can still offer performance benefits, as origin server communications can be streamlined to include only raw data rather than full HTML pages. For example, the origin can generate a small dynamic page that references larger cacheable fragments, enabling the final HTML page to be assembled and served at the edge using Akamai‘s ESI (Edge Side Includes) 9 technology. In practice, we find that EdgeComputing customers not only benefit from the uniquely high levels of performance, scalability, and fault tolerance this model offers, but also from the ability to develop and deploy their applications more quickly—with much less worry about capacity planning, provisioning infrastructure, and architecting for scalability.
