Serverless Functions in the Cloud-Edge Continuum: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

The Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) paradigm is increasingly adopted for the development of Cloud-native applications, which especially benefit from the seamless scalability and attractive pricing models of serverless deployments. With the continuous emergence of latency-sensitive applications and services, including Internet-of-Things and augmented reality, it is now natural to wonder whether and how the FaaS paradigm can be efficiently exploited in the Cloud-Edge Continuum, where serverless functions may benefit from reduced network delay between their invoking users and the FaaS platform. In this paper, we illustrate the key challenges that must be faced to effectively deploy serverless functions in the Cloud-Edge Continuum and review recent contributions proposed by the research community towards overcoming those challenges. We also discuss the key issues that currently remain unsolved and highlight a few research opportunities for better support of FaaS in the Compute Continuum.