What if you have poor/intermittent backend connectivity, low latency requirements, or are handling sensitive data and don't want to ship it to a cloud backend? I think there can be a place for this model. Perhaps something like GDPR can make it more attractive? In the projects you have worked on, was the primary motivation maintainability or a business need to gather all data centrally in order to perform some kind of global cross device analysis/aggregation?
Dan I agree there is place for this model especially when you want to make local decisions or produce lot of data (e.g. video). In most of the projects we handled data required central aggregation.
If I would design a service I would rather trust my cloud provider with an SSL connection in between, than a heterogeneous mix of servers that may be physically compromised (there are very few places that could house an "edge" at datacenter security standards).
