All latency lovers are used to the mystical experience of joy coming from aligning data to a cache line size and seeing your latency improve by hundreds of microseconds. But as transcendent as we can become, the laws of physics still apply to us.

That means that there is little we can do when data has to be fetched from across the planet. By putting data close to its users, you can save hundreds of milliseconds and still be faster than the most optimized code, even if your code sucks.

Massive data replication comes with challenges, though: how to keep the costs in check? How to make sure that a semblance of consistency is maintained? What about those pesky regulations that mandate data residency?

In this talk I will explore the Data Edge: a growing movement of databases that are overcoming those challenges to make your data always available where your users are.