Cloud Computing and Quality of Service: Issues and Developments

Cloud computing is a dynamic information technology (IT) paradigm that delivers on demand computing resources to a user over a network infrastructure. The Cloud Service Provider (CSP) offers applications which can be accessed online to users. Such applications can be shared by more than one user. CSPs provides programming interfaces that allows customers to build and deploy applications on the cloud; as well as providing massive storage and computing infrastructure to users. Users usually have no control on how data is stored on the cloud or where the underlying resources are located. With this limited control, customers’ requirements and Quality of Service (QoS) expectations from CSPs are spelt out using a Service Level Agreement (SLA). It is thus imperative to have the adequate QoS guarantees from a CSP. This paper examines trends in the area of Cloud computing QoS and provides a guide for future research. A review and survey of existing works in literature is done in order to identify these Cloud QoS trends. The finding is that the ultimate expectation of any QoS metrics or model is the related to cost concern for both the CSP and user

5G Multi-access Edge Computing: Security, Dependability, and Performance

The main innovation of the Fifth Generation (5G) of mobile networks is the ability to provide novel services with new and stricter requirements. One of the technologies that enable the new 5G services is the Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC). MEC is a system composed of multiple devices with computing and storage capabilities that are deployed at the edge of the network, i.e., close to the end users. MEC reduces latency and enables contextual information and real-time awareness of the local environment. MEC also allows cloud offloading and the reduction of traffic congestion. Performance is not the only requirement that the new 5G services have. New mission-critical applications also require high security and dependability. These three aspects (security, dependability, and performance) are rarely addressed together. This survey fills this gap and presents 5G MEC by addressing all these three aspects. First, we overview the background knowledge on MEC by referring to the current standardization efforts. Second, we individually present each aspect by introducing the related taxonomy (important for the not expert on the aspect), the state of the art, and the challenges on 5G MEC. Finally, we discuss the challenges of jointly addressing the three aspects.Comment: 33 pages, 11 figures, 15 tables. This paper is under review at IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials. Copyright IEEE 202