Supporting Users in Cloud Plan Selection

Cloud computing is a key technology for outsourcing data and applications to external providers. The current cloud market offers a multitude of solutions (plans) differing from one another in terms of their characteristics. In this context, the selection of the right plan for outsourcing is of paramount importance for users wishing to move their data/applications to the cloud. The scientific community has then developed different models and tools for capturing users\u2019 requirements and evaluating candidate plans to determine the extent to which each of them satisfies such requirements. In this chapter, we illustrate some of the existing solutions proposed for cloud plan selection and for supporting users in the specification of their (crisp and/or fuzzy) needs

Fog computing security: a review of current applications and security solutions

Fog computing is a new paradigm that extends the Cloud platform model by providing computing resources on the edges of a network. It can be described as a cloud-like platform having similar data, computation, storage and application services, but is fundamentally different in that it is decentralized. In addition, Fog systems are capable of processing large amounts of data locally, operate on-premise, are fully portable, and can be installed on heterogeneous hardware. These features make the Fog platform highly suitable for time and location-sensitive applications. For example, Internet of Things (IoT) devices are required to quickly process a large amount of data. This wide range of functionality driven applications intensifies many security issues regarding data, virtualization, segregation, network, malware and monitoring. This paper surveys existing literature on Fog computing applications to identify common security gaps. Similar technologies like Edge computing, Cloudlets and Micro-data centres have also been included to provide a holistic review process. The majority of Fog applications are motivated by the desire for functionality and end-user requirements, while the security aspects are often ignored or considered as an afterthought. This paper also determines the impact of those security issues and possible solutions, providing future security-relevant directions to those responsible for designing, developing, and maintaining Fog systems

Enabling Social- and Location-Aware IoT Applications in Smart Cities

In the last decade, governments, municipalities, and industries have invested large amounts of funds on research on smart cities with the main goal of developing services to improve people’s quality of life. Many proposals focus on a Cloud-centric network architecture in which all the data collected from a myriad of sensors devices is transferred to the Cloud for processing. However, this approach presents significant limitations when faced with the formidable traffic generated by the Internet of Things and with the need for low-latency services. The deployment of IoT devices in compact groups, connected to the smart city network infrastructure by relatively powerful “gateways”, opens the possibility to depart from the centralized architectures and move the computation closer to the data sources. To this end, this paper proposes SPF, a new middleware solution that supports IoT application and service development, deployment, and management. SPF runs IoT services on capable devices located at the edge of the network and proposes a programming model that enables to take advantage of decentralized computation resources in a seamless fashion. SPF also leverages an information dissemination solution designed for constrained network environments and adopts Value-of-Information based methods to prioritize transmission of essential information

A Research Perspective on Fog Computing

reserved7siState-of-the-art applications are typically deployed on top of cloud services which offer the illusion of infinite resources, elastic scalability, and a simple pay-per-use billing model. While this is very convenient for developers, it also comes with relatively high access latency for end users. Future application domains such as the Internet of Things, autonomous driving, or future 5G mobile apps, however, require low latency access which is typically achieved by moving computation towards the edge of the network. This natural extension of the cloud towards the edge is typically referred to as Fog Computing and has lately found a lot of attention. However, Fog Computing as a deployment platform has not yet found widespread adoption; this, we believe, could be helped through a consistent use of the service-oriented computing paradigm for fog infrastructure services. Based on this motivation, this paper describes the concept of Fog Computing in detail, discusses the main obstacles for Fog Computing adoption, and derives open research challenges.mixedBermbach, David*; Pallas, Frank; Pérez, David García; Plebani, Pierluigi; Anderson, Maya; Kat, Ronen; Tai, StefanBermbach, David; Pallas, Frank; Pérez, David García; Plebani, Pierluigi; Anderson, Maya; Kat, Ronen; Tai, Stefa