Fog Computing State of the Art: Concept and Classification of Platforms to Support Distributed Computing Systems

Abstract

As the Internet of Things (IoT) becomes a part of our daily life, there is a rapid growth in the connected devices. A well-established approach based on cloud computing technologies cannot provide the necessary quality of service in such an environment, particularly in terms of reducing data latency. Today, fog computing technology is seen as a novel approach for processing large amounts of critical and time-sensitive data. This article reviews cloud computing technology and analyzes the prerequisites for the evolution of this approach and the emergence of the concept of fog computing. As part of an overview of the critical features of fog computing, we analyze the frequent confusion of the concepts of fog and edge computing. We provide an overview of fog computing technologies: virtualization, containerization, orchestration, scalability, parallel computing environments, as well as systematic analysis of the most popular platforms that support fog computing. As a result of the analysis, we offer two approaches to classification of the fog computing platforms: by the principle of openness/closure of components and by the three-level classification based on the provided platform functionality (Deploy-, Platform- and Ecosystem as a Service).