Service Provisioning at the Edge: An AI Approach Based on Policies

Despite the popularity of cloud computing among the Information and Community Technology (ICT) community, it falls short of accommodating applications that expose strict non-functional requirements on data freshness and security. Transferring data to distant clouds could render the data obsolete and/or expose the data to interception risks. This chapter motivates the adoption of edge computing as an alternative to cloud computing when cloud is declared unfit for such applications. Edge resources are placed “next to” where data are located reducing transfer time and exposure. To delineate edges’ provisioned services without obstructing clouds’ provisioned services, this chapter’s main objective is to discuss from an Artificial Intelligence (AI) perspective the potential roles that edges are expected to take over along with enforcing the completion of edges’ provisioned services using policies specified in Open Digital Right Language (ODRL). This chapter also discusses some experiments in support of service provisioning at the edge.