Towards a Cloud Computing Continuum

Abstract The current trend of developing distributed, location aware, heterogeneous computing intense and data sensitive applications is changing the frontiers of computing. A Cloud with just one datacenter is not sufficient today. Computing Architectures comprising of multiple datacenters spanned globally is the current day requirement. But limitations like security, interoperability, heterogeneity and effective interaction hamper this idea. The concept of establishing a Cloud Continuum is slowly developing among researchers and Organizations. This paper discusses how Cloud Computing environment has evolved from a minimal centralized architecture to more distributed Continuum. We also discuss a possible architecture that comprises of an ICT layer over a Cloud Federation.