Collaborative Mechanism for Hybrid Fog-Cloud Scenarios

The collaborative scenario is introduced in Section 2.1, paying special attention
to the architecturalmodels as well as to the challenges posed when considering
the fog–cloud collaborative model enriched with new strategies such as
innovative resource sharing. Then, next section briefly introduces fog-to-cloud
(F2C), as one of the proposed architectural contributions in this hybrid
scenario, showing its main benefits in different verticals, also emphasizing
some open questions remaining unsolved yet. Section 2.3 describes main
F2C challenges (could be also applied to any F2C-like architecture), split into
three domains, research, industry, and business, in order to illustrate what
the issues are on a large view for a successful deployment. Ongoing work
done in well-established fora is introduced next in Section 2.4, with the aim
of providing users with pointers to main active efforts in the area. Certainly,
as of today, this is a very active area; hence, many other relevant works are
simultaneously running out there, as it can be seen after a light pass on the
recent programs of highly reputed conferences or highly impacting journals.
However, it is not the aim of this chapter to report all contributions dealing
with all foreseen challenges, rather to point out the reader to the most active
repositories. Section 2.5 addresses the insights of the data management in the
Internet of Things (IoT)-fog-cloud scenario, emphasizing challenges, as well as
the benefits an F2C-like architecture may bring to sort them out. Finally, this
chapter ends in Section 2.6 summarizing what the near future is expected to
bring in and opening some additional questions for further discussions.