OpenFog Consortium’s fog computing architecture becomes an IEEE standard
The IEEE Standards Association has adopted OpenFog Consortium’s work on a reference architecture for fog computing, which extends cloud computing concepts to the network edge for data-intensive applications.
The OpenFog Reference Architecture will be known as IEEE 1934 and provides a “universal technical framework that enables the data-intensive requirements of the internet of things, 5G and artificial intelligence applications,” according to OpenFog Consortium.
“We now have an industry-backed and -supported blueprint that will supercharge the development of new applications and business models made possible through fog computing,” said Helder Antunes, chairman of the OpenFog Consortium and senior director at Cisco, in a statement. “This is a significant milestone for OpenFog and a monumental inflection point for those companies and industries that will benefit from the ensuing innovation and market growth made possible by the standard.” He added that OpenFog Consortium had developed the architecture with the intent that it would serve as a framework for a standards organization.
John Zao, chair of the IEEE Standards Working Group on Fog Computing and Networking Architecture Framework, said that OpenFog’s reference architecture “provided a solid, high-level foundation for the development of fog computing standards” and that the group’s technical committee worked closely with IEEE.
OpenFog Consortium said that its reference architecture is based on eight core technical principles:
-security
-scalability
-openness
-autonomy
-reliability, availability, and serviceability, or RAS
-agility
-hierarchy
-programmability
“The reference architecture, and now the IEEE standard, addresses the need for an interoperable end-to-end data connectivity solution along the cloud-to-things continuum,” OpenFog Consortium said. “The massive and growing amounts of data produced, transported, analyzed and acted upon within industries such as transportation, healthcare, manufacturing and energy—collectively measured in zettabytes—is exposing challenges in cloud-only architectures and operations that reside only at the edge of the network. Fog computing works in conjunction with the cloud and across siloed operations to effectively enable end-to-end IoT, 5G and AI scenarios.”
