SLICES SCC-Blueprint: A Reference Architecture for Serverless Cloud Continuum Research

The convergence of serverless computing and the Cloud Continuum (CC) introduces new opportunities for efficient and scalable deployment of event-driven applications across heterogeneous, geo-distributed infrastructures, optimizing resource utilization and reducing operational complexity. However, the complexity of managing such environments, spanning from centralized cloud data centers to (far)edge nodes, poses significant challenges for experimentation, orchestration, and reproducibility. This work presents the Serverless Cloud Continuum Blueprint (SCCBP), a reference architecture and experimental framework developed within the European SLICES-RI initiative. The SCCBP enables researchers to design, deploy, and evaluate serverless workloads across the continuum by abstracting infrastructure heterogeneity through a federated control plane and specialized resource controllers. We demonstrate the capabilities of the blueprint through two experiments that assess cold start behavior and serverless integration in an event-driven architecture that leverages resources from public and private clouds. Our results highlight the potential of the SCCBP to support reproducible, scalable, and flexible experimentation in the emerging domain of serverless computing in CC environments.