IEEE makes OpenFog Consortium's reference architecture official standard for fog computing

The IEEE Standards Association has adopted the OpenFog Consortium's reference architecture as a standard for fog computing.

The new standard, which is known as IEEE 1934, is now a reference architecture for fog computing, which extends cloud computing to the edge of an enterprise's network. The "universal technical framework" enables the data-intensive requirements of applications and services such as IoT, 5G and artificial intelligence.

Fog computing facilitates the operation of compute, storage and networking services between end devices and cloud computing data centers to network edges.

“We now have an industry-backed and -supported blueprint that will supercharge the development of new applications and business models made possible through fog computing,” said Helder Antunes, chairman of the OpenFog Consortium and senior director at Cisco, in a prepared statement. “This is a significant milestone for OpenFog and a monumental inflection point for those companies and industries that will benefit from the ensuing innovation and market growth made possible by the standard.”

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Antunes said that the OpenFog Consortium had developed the architecture with the intent that it would serve as a framework for a standards organization. Arm, Cisco, Dell, Intel, Microsoft and Princeton University founded the OpenFog Consortium a little over two years ago in order to drive the adoption of fog computing through an open architecture.

The OpenFog Consortium said that its reference architecture was based on eight core technical principles: security; scalability; openness; autonomy; reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS); agility; hierarchy; and programmability.