Symbiotic Resource Pricing in the Computing Continuum Era

Though extensive research efforts have been devoted to the problem of computing resource pricing, they mainly focus on single computing paradigms. In this paper, we provide a holistic approach to this problem, by treating the whole computing continuum, consisting of cloud, edge, and fog computing providers, simultaneously offering their resources to the users. Within such a complex setting, we establish the concept of symbiotic computing resource pricing and sharing, where the computing providers and the users coexist within a mutually beneficial ecosystem, sharing services and resources as a means of ensuring their business survival and service satisfaction. Under this prism, we introduce two key pricing families, namely the non-cooperative one which involves competition and is treated through game theoretic approaches, and the cooperative resource pricing (full or partial), which addresses complex scenarios through optimization and coalition. A thorough performance assessment is provided, through modeling and simulation, in order to highlight and quantify the key characteristics and tradeoffs of the various resource pricing approaches introduced.