Fog Computing: Will it be the Future of Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing is the newest computing paradigm that makes computing resources available over the Internet on a utility costing basis. Cloud computing offers many advantages to users in terms of reduced cost, elimination of system administrative functions, increased flexibility, better reliability and location independence. Though these are definite advantages, cloud computing also suffers from certain limitations. These limitations arise from the very same reason that is considered an advantage too. Hosting of cloud data centres in the Internet creates large and unpredictable network latencies and undefined security issues as sensitive data is now entrusted to a third party. Also location independence of processing in cloud computing may also not desirable for certain types of networks such as sensor networks and Internet of Things. These services are known as location aware services and require location dependent fast processing. In order to overcome these limitations, researchers have proposed a new cloud computing model called fog computing where the cloud system is located either at the edge of the private network or very close to it. In this paper, the authors take an in depth look at both these technologies to investigate fog computing can reliably overcome the limitations of cloud computing and effectively replace it and become the de facto cloud computing model of the future.