Novel Data and Processing Approaches for the Development of Hyper-distributed Applications

Although data is mostly collected in IoT devices, 80% of its processing takes place in data centers and centralized computing facilities such as clouds. This paradigm strongly relies on the network infrastructure and incurs high communication latencies and significant energy consumption while under-utilizing the computing resources embedded in the IoT devices. Fostering architectures that empower end-users leveraging the collaborative capacities of IoT, edge and far-edge devices will reduce the dependence on the Cloud and the network overload and will enable IT systems with higher responsiveness, accuracy, and energy efficiency.

Currently, IoT and Edge devices are treated as surrogates to the Cloud not only from an application processing point of view; the control of the application and the infrastructure are hosted in the Cloud too. This has a strong impact on the design of hyper-distributed applications since developers must be concerned about the deployment of the different components of the application instead of focusing on solving the problems specific to their core business and area of knowledge.

Novel data management and processing frameworks oppose this resource-greedy, centralised management mechanisms and establish new control planes distributed across the Continuum integrating the -- compute, store, connectivity and cyber-physical -- capabilities of the devices with seamless management across providers, connectivity types and network zone. These next-generation computing and data technologies pave the way for the raise of new programming environments that ease the programming, deployment, and maintenance of hyper-distributed applications on the Continuum.