Hybrid Clouds for Data-Intensive, 5G-Enabled IoT Applications: An Overview, Key Issues and Relevant Architecture

Area of Science:

• Cloud Computing
• Edge Computing
• Internet of Things (IoT)

Background:

• Hybrid cloud multi-access edge computing (MEC) is crucial for supporting Internet of Things (IoT) applications.
• Existing deployments face challenges, especially within the 5G paradigm.

Purpose of the Study:

• To provide an overview of hybrid clouds and MEC technologies.
• To propose a novel decentralized hybrid cloud MEC architecture as a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).
• To analyze the business potential and stakeholder ecosystem of the proposed PaaS.

Main Methods:

• Literature review of hybrid clouds and MEC technologies.
• Design and description of a decentralized hybrid cloud MEC architecture.
• Stakeholder ecosystem analysis.
• Presentation of smart city and mobile health use cases.

Main Results:

• A comprehensive overview of hybrid cloud MEC is presented.
• A novel decentralized hybrid cloud MEC architecture (PaaS) is proposed.
• The stakeholder ecosystem and business potential are analyzed.
• Use cases demonstrate the PaaS's capability for IoT application development.

Conclusions:

• The proposed decentralized hybrid cloud MEC PaaS effectively supports IoT applications.
• The architecture addresses key issues in MEC deployments under the 5G paradigm.
• The platform offers significant business potential for smart city and mobile health solutions.