PrEstoCloud: A Novel Framework for Data-Intensive Multi-Cloud, Fog, and Edge Function-as-a-Service Applications

Fog computing extends multi-cloud computing by enabling services or application functions to be hosted close to their data sources. To take advantage of the capabilities of fog computing, serverless and the function-as-a-service (FaaS) software engineering paradigms allow for the flexible deployment of applications on multi-cloud, fog, and edge resources. This article reviews prominent fog computing frameworks and discusses some of the challenges and requirements of FaaS-enabled applications. Moreover, it proposes a novel framework able to dynamically manage multi-cloud, fog, and edge resources and to deploy data-intensive applications developed using the FaaS paradigm. The proposed framework leverages the FaaS paradigm in a way that improves the average service response time of data-intensive applications by a factor of three regardless of the underlying multi-cloud, fog, and edge resource infrastructure.