ORCA: Enabling an Owner-Centric and Data-Driven Management Paradigm for Future Heterogeneous Edge-IoT Systems

Integrating the Internet of Things (IoT) and edge computing in Edge-IoT systems, converged with machine intelligence, has the potential to enable a wide range of applications in smart homes, factories, and cities. Edge-IoT can connect many diverse devices, and IoT asset owners can run heterogeneous IoT systems supported by various vendors or service providers (SPs), using either cloud or local edge computing (or both) for resource assistance. The existing methods typically manage the systems as separate vertical silos, or in a vendor-/SP-centric way, which suffers from significant challenges. In this article, we present a novel owner-centric management paradigm named ORCA to address the gaps left by the owner-centric paradigm and empower IoT asset owners to effectively identify and mitigate potential issues in their own network premises, regardless of vendors'/SPs' situations. ORCA aims to be scalable and extensible in assisting IoT owners to perform intelligent management through a behavior-oriented and data-driven approach. ORCA is an ongoing project, and the preliminary results indicate that it can significantly empower IoT system owners to better manage their IoT assets.