Estimating Performances of Application Deployment on Distributed IoT-Edge-Cloud Infrastructures

Within the dynamic edge-cloud continuum, characterized by a lack of shared standards among platforms and vendors, application development is often dictated by the initial platform selection. Moreover, applications designed to harness the cloud for data analytics and storage, while relying on devices as data sources, face challenges in adapting to intermediate points along the edge-cloud spectrum. These issues are challenging the research community to propose novel solutions and methodologies aimed at aiding developers and integrators in realizing applications that can fully exploit the capabilities of the edge/cloud continuum, as well as choosing the most suitable edge infrastructure and cloud service ecosystem. The above research challenges are the main focus of the INSIDER research project. In this context, this paper aims to propose a formal model of the concepts and elements that compose applications in the edge/cloud continuum, and to show how this model could be used to estimate some performance indicators of possible deployment of applications in a cloud/edge computing infrastructure.