Will cloud gain an edge, or, CLOSER, to the edge

Abstract

This paper accompanies a keynote speech given at the 8th International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science, CLOSER 2018. The keynote offered an overview of ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ Cloud Computing, and what we might appreciate of each. In respect to ‘traditional’, issues of performance and energy efficiency, and the potential conflict between these, were discussed, as well as how these were still relevant to ‘new’ Cloud. Key to the ‘new’ Cloud is the advent of so-called function-as-a-service and edge, to which these issues of performance and lessons learned from energy efficiency can be applied. Important to this is to establish what we mean by edge as distinct from other things as may be similarly referred to. The relevance of new Cloud, then, to Connected and Autonomous Vehicles offers for an industry vertical that could exploit such formulations, and attempts to do this will lead to a variety of technical and research questions. Also, with a person in America having been killed by a vehicle acting autonomously near to the timing of this talk, safety concerns should never be far from thinking in addressing such questions.