Benefits of Distributed Systems

Distributed systems offer several benefits compared to centralized systems. Here are some key advantages:

• Scalability: Distributed systems can scale horizontally by adding more machines to the network, allowing them to handle increasing workloads and accommodate growing numbers of users or data. This scalability is essential for applications experiencing rapid growth or fluctuating demand.
• Fault Tolerance: Distributed systems are inherently resilient to failures because they distribute data and processing across multiple nodes. If one node fails, the system can continue to operate without significant disruption by rerouting requests to other healthy nodes. This fault tolerance improves system reliability and availability.
• Performance: By distributing data and computation closer to users, distributed systems can reduce latency and improve performance. This is particularly important for applications that require real-time responsiveness, such as online gaming, streaming media, and financial trading.
• High Availability: Distributed systems can achieve high availability by replicating data and services across multiple nodes. Even if some nodes become unavailable due to hardware failures or network issues, the system remains accessible and continues to provide services to users.
• Flexibility: Distributed systems offer greater flexibility in terms of deployment and resource allocation. They can run on heterogeneous hardware and operating systems, allowing organizations to leverage existing infrastructure and adopt a mix of on-premises and cloud-based solutions.
• Geographic Distribution: Distributed systems enable data and services to be replicated across multiple geographic locations, improving performance for users in different regions and providing disaster recovery capabilities. This geographic distribution also helps comply with data sovereignty requirements and regulatory constraints.

Distributed systems are the key technological component of modern information and communications technology. These are such that different computers work on specific tasks simultaneously but as if they functioned as a single entity. It enables effective parallel processing, upgrade of system capacity, and performance redundancy, which are currently in practice.