Cloud and Fog Topologies

Without the cloud, IoT growth and its market would be nonexistent. Essentially, billions of endpoint devices that were historically dumb and not connected would need to manage themselves without the ability to share or aggregate data. Billions of such small embedded systems add no marginal value for customers. The value of the IoT is in the data it produces—not at a single endpoint but in thousands or millions of nodes. The cloud provides the ability to have simple sensors, cameras, switches, beacons, and actuators participate in a common language with each other. The cloud is the common denominator of the data currency.

The ubiquitous cloud metaphor refers to an infrastructure of computing services that are generally on-demand. The pool of resources (computing, networking, storage, and the associated software services) can dynamically scale up or down based on load average or quality of service. Clouds are typically large data centers that...