Clustering is a fundamental problem with a wide range of applications. In this paper, we study a balanced version of the well-known k-center clustering problem, where the objective is to select k centers from a given set of points, and assign to each center at most L of the input points, so as to minimize the maximum distance from a point to the center to which it is assigned. We assume soft capacities, where points are allowed to be selected as center more than once. Motivated by applications involving massive datasets, we study the problem in the massively parallel computation (MPC) and streaming models. In particular, we present a two-round MPC algorithm for the balanced k-center problem, achieving an approximation factor of 5α+2, where α is the approximation factor of the corresponding sequential algorithm. This substantially improves the currently best approximation factor of 32α, available for the problem. We show that the approximation factor of our algorithm can be further improved to 5+ε in all spaces with bounded doubling dimension, including the Euclidean space. We also consider the balanced k-center problem in the streaming model, and present a constant-factor streaming algorithm in any metric space using O(knε) memory, and a factor 5+ε streaming algorithm using O(kpolylogn) memory in doubling metrics.