Its called Fog Computing and is a new technological paradigm that promises to be an evolution of the cloud, which is useful especially for the world of the Internet of Things. How does it work? If today the cloud is the environment used to manage remote applications, the fog has the advantage of better support new IT applications in our connected world, such as self-driving cars, remote monitoring of patients , drones for home delivery, adaptive lighting roads and homes. All this taking advantage of pervasive computing infrastructure that will consist of ad hoc computers, routers and personal devices such as smartphones.

The fog comes in response to the fact that sometimes, for some types of applications, resources in the cloud you can reveal too far away from the source of data to manage. From the analogy weather here: as the cloud is generally high in the sky, in a place quite far and not very defined, the fog instead stationed closer to the ground, or to end users.

It seems that the real engine of fog computing is destined to be the IoT, which by many is referred to as the next big thing computer, with growth forecasts of respect: if Cisco has made it known that by 2020 there will be over 50 billion devices connected to the network of networks, IDC analysts have estimated that, again in 2020, the total value of sales due IoT over seven trillion dollars, touching to be exact proportion 7.1 trillion.

A recent forecast from IDC estimates that by 2018 40% of dallIoT created data will be stored, processed, analyzed and managed, near edge of the network, when not directly at the edge, thus giving substance to the fog computing promises. More specifically, in the IDC forecast, the choice of where to process the data generated by the sensors in IoT optics, that is, if the management is to take place at the corporate data center (after a special trip to the networks) or near end of the edge (or on edge itself), it will be based on service levels and types of data.

By acting at the peripheral level, that is, on the Edge of the network, you can manage vast amounts of data without necessarily passing each time from the cloud, with two undeniable advantages: on the one hand, it reduces the required bandwidth needed to reach the cloud or the date corporate center, and the other one can assume an increase in the level of security, because the infrastructure may be more controllable. One of the examples cited in the Internet of Things is that of aircraft engines, which only in the space of a half hour operation creates more than 10 terabytes of data related to its own operation. Transmitting the data along the cloud can be problematic, both in terms of bandwidth and in terms of latency here is because according to the paradigm of computing fog, good part of the processing of these data could take place at local level, without the need to forward amount as relevant to the cloud or to the corporate data center.