The main idea of fog computing is the use of a decentralized network formed from disparate individual computing devices, as opposed to a single data center structure.

What distinguishes fog computing from cloud services is that in this case the computing resources are decentralized: instead of being provided by some centralized data center or supercomputer or server, the accumulated resource is delivered from individual computing devices.

This makes it possible to build extremely scalable and distributed systems, that can achieve performance and efficiency, not available with traditional cloud-based architecture. The aim of Sonm is to attract private users and data centers with free computing resources, and to form an open market based on these resources. A market where buyers, on a competitive basis, can find the resources to run their applications.