Enterprise-scale distributed computing has emerged as a foundational pillar of modern digital transformation, supporting high-volume transactional platforms, large-scale analytics pipelines, and mission-critical enterprise applications operating across geographically dispersed infrastructures. As organizations expand their digital footprint, traditional centralized computing paradigms prove insufficient to meet escalating demands for scalability, low latency, continuous availability, and regulatory compliance. The rapid adoption of cloud computing, microservices-based architectures, containerization, and edge deployments has fundamentally reshaped enterprise system design, introducing both unprecedented flexibility and substantial operational complexity. This review critically examines the architectural evolution and operational frameworks that define enterprise-scale distributed computing. It analyzes the transition from monolithic systems to microservices architectures, highlighting the implications of service decomposition, API-driven communication, and distributed data management. The study further explores cloud-native design principles, container orchestration mechanisms, event-driven communication models, service mesh infrastructures, and hybrid and multi-cloud deployment strategies that enable elasticity, portability, and resilience. Beyond architectural design, the paper emphasizes operational sustainability as a decisive success factor. Key operational dimensions—including observability, fault tolerance, reliability engineering, DevOps integration, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), performance engineering, and security governance—are systematically examined to demonstrate how enterprises maintain stability and agility in complex distributed ecosystems. The review also discusses emerging paradigms such as edge computing, AI-driven operations (AIOps), serverless computing, and sustainable infrastructure management, which are reshaping enterprise distributed environments. By synthesizing contemporary best practices, technological advancements, and persistent architectural trade-offs, this paper provides a structured analytical framework for understanding the design and management of large-scale distributed systems. The insights presented aim to support researchers, system architects, and enterprise practitioners in developing resilient, scalable, and strategically aligned distributed infrastructures capable of sustaining long-term organizational growth.
Prakash Adhikari (Sun,) studied this question.