ICOS

The unstoppable proliferation of novel computing and sensing device technologies and the ever-growing demand for data-intensive edge and cloud applications are driving a paradigm shift in computing around dynamic and intelligent, but seamless interconnection of IoT, edge, and cloud resources in a single computing system that forms a continuum.

Numerous research initiatives have focused on developing some kind of management layer to properly manage the continuum. At the same time, there are several solutions aimed at managing edge and cloud systems, but without adequately addressing the challenges of the entire continuum. The next step is undoubtedly to develop an enhanced, open, secure, trustworthy, adaptable, technology agnostic, and much more comprehensive management strategy that covers the entire continuum, i.e., entire stack and leveraging technologies outside the shell (e.g., AI, data, etc.), but also open to accommodate new services as technology advances.

The ICOS project aims to address a number of challenges that arise in addressing this continuum paradigm by proposing an approach that embeds a well-defined set of functionalities, culminating in the definition of an IoT2cloud Operating System (ICOS).

The main objective of the ICOS project is to design, develop, and validate a meta-operating system for a continuum by overcoming the following challenges:

• device volatility and heterogeneity, continuum infrastructure virtualization, and diverse network connectivity,
• optimized and scalable service execution and performance, and resource consumption, including power consumption,
• guaranteed trust, security, and privacy,
• reducing integration costs and effectively mitigating cloud provider lock-in effects in a data-driven system based on principles of openness, adaptability, data sharing, and a future edge market scenario for services and data.