The distributed cloud and communications system is one of the six audacious goals NGA developed for North American 6G vision. It aims at making 6G systems a wide-area cloud with ubiquitous computing and workload distribution across devices, network nodes and data centers. The 6G distributed cloud and communications system is a step towards converged communication and computing system capabilities beyond what has been achieved in 4G and 5G on network cloudification and edge computing.

This paper provides an overview on the distributed cloud and communications system from the perspective of design goals, driving forces, challenges, research directions, and the path to realization. The paper is intended to trigger research and design discussions across communication and computing communities to fully realize the distributed cloud and communications system audacious goal for 6G.