- image, video, audio processing near consumers
- game or video chat servers running near the centroid of people in a session
- server side rendering of single page js apps
- route users to regional data centers for compliance
- graphql stitching / caching (we do this!)
- pass through cache for s3, or just minio as a global s3 (we do this!)
- buildkite / GitHub Action agents (we do this!)
- tensorflow prediction / DDoS & bot detection
- load balance between spot instances on AWS/GCP
- TLS termination for custom domains
- authentication proxy / api gateway (we do this!)
- IoT stream processing near devices
It's just portability v convenience. But unlike ~15 years ago with cloud compute, it _feels_ like more people are skeptical of convenience, which is interesting.