Pervasive Platforms: From Cloud to Fog

The proliferation of smart objects, coupled with the widespread availability of the Internet, makes pervasive computing more concrete every day. Whether at home, in commute, or at work, we can already enjoy a variety of unobtrusive services. These services are however still limited in terms of performance, security, cost and value. A number of reasons can be put forward to explain the difficulties currently experienced. In this talk, we focus on two major challenges: building context-aware services and designing the right architecture to do so. Regarding architecture, most pervasive services rely on cloud solutions. The attractiveness of this approach is easy to explain: elasticity, easy administration, computing power, storage capabilities, etc. However, a number of added-value services impose requirements that cannot be met by cloud-based architectures. These services call for fog-based solutions or for mixed approaches. To support this statement, we will present iCasa, a service-oriented pervasive platform designed for the fog. ICasa allows the production of context-aware applications that can be autonomically adapted at runtime. This platform has been experimented for several years in the smart home domain. We will also take the opportunity of this talk to present the notion of smart home and its current situation.