Towards the Cloud of Things Sensing and Actuation as a Service, a Key Enabler for a New Cloud Paradigm

Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most effective paradigms to enable cheap, elastic and user-friendly access to computing, storage and networking resources. However, a key drawback of current Cloud solutions lies in the lack of avenues for interaction with the physical world. This work aims at contributing the design of an architecture for pervasive ICT infrastructure, where new generation services leverage the surrounding environment, collecting data and actuating control strategies. In accordance with such vision computing, storage, networking and sensing fit as a whole in an all-round encompassing Cloud-inspired provisioning model, paving the way for innovative and value-added services, to be implemented by bridging Clouds with the Internet of Things. Heterogeneous resources should be aggregated and abstracted according to tailored thing-like semantics, thus enabling a Things as a Service paradigm and eventually disclosing what we call a "Cloud of Things" (CoT).