Defining edge, fog, and cloud computing

In the early 2000s, when Cisco's (then) CEO John Chambers coined the term Network as a Platform (INETNW), the era of cloud computing had just begun to take shape. Cloud computing is one of the disruptive technologies that set the stage for game-changing, "network-enabled" platforms, which are today considered massive growth engines for businesses.

Traditionally, computing resources had been hardware-based assets with fixed compute capacity, and collocated in enterprise premises. This model provided data proximity, data ownership, and data security benefits. However, when a business needs to scale up its compute capacity, then that would translate to significant capex increase and management costs.

A typical cloud computing framework turns this model around. Cloud computing equips third-party cloud providers to offer on-demand compute power, data storage, and application hosting services. Compute resources and applications no longer need to physically...