1. TANDEM project targets the formulation of a complete solution for the support of new Baas/FaaS cloud models at the network edge. The project will focus on the design, implemenation and evaluation of an integrated platform which will achieve the simplification of the development, management, monitoring and service extension procedures in inherently distributed environments. The following capabilities are of great significance:

• The ability to integrate existing and configurable software modules in winder and complex function chains.
• Their simplified interconnection with the local edge devices/data sources.

These capabilities target typical edge computing environments with a particular focus on the Internet-of-Things (IoT) domain, where the interconnection and management of local devices e.g., sensors, is a challenging task. Typical examples of desired functions and local processing tasks, include the statistics extraction from gathered measurements (e.g. mean values, outliers), as well as the object recognition  process in video streams (e.g. human/car/gun detection etc.). The project aims to provide a boost to the development of such services by facilitating the integration of local devices as well as generic, but customizable, functional modules in a similar fashion to the
Backend/Function-as-a-Service model, enabling the use of third party, mature software. The project will deliver a full-fledged prototype and will further develop and deliver key functions including IoT (sensor) data and video analytics (object recognition), as well as widely adopted message queues that will facilitate interconnection and interfaces between service components. The proposed platform is based on two pillars:

(Α) The edge nodes, which offer compute resources whose separation will rely on the virtualization technology of Docker Containers. Focus will be given on the integration of various local devices interconnection technologies e.g. Bluetooth, Zigbee, LοRα, WiFi. The target functions include:

• Automatic device discovery and integration, such as sensors, cameras etc.
• Local services and resources management, such as software modules and relevant resources creation, deletion, modification, interconnection and monitoring.

(Β) Management Platform, which includes procedures for services configuration, management, monitoring and extension. The target functions include computational environment management and orchestration functions such as service lifecycle management, telemetry, robustness and elasticity/scalability management, graphical interfaces for resource or service management, automated service playback or differentiation in the available nodes, service interconnection between nodes etc. The target functions also include modules management and orchestration functions, which in turn include:

• Function store, which contains module offer, search, management and display functions in a container images level. The project will implement specific modules aiming at the the integrated platform implementation and evaluation in real use cases as well as at a catalogue initialization which will be offered to the community for use and extension.These modules will be the following:
  • IoT data streams pre-processing e.g. mean values estimation, alerts, etc.
  • Video streams analysis for object recognition
  • Message queues, including well-known open-source solutions e.g. Kafka etc.
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•  Module adaptation to each service’s needs, through relevant interfaces.

• Module orchestration, which will be based on:

• • The development of an information model for the structured description of the offered functions and the accurate interface definition.
  • The support of graphical environment for the final composition of function chains from the service managers.
  • The control and compatibility validation of the modules involved in complex services.

TANDEM consists of the following Work Packages:

WP1: System Architecture, aiming at:

• Use cases definition, functional and technical requirements and specifications definition
• Basic units and interfaces definition and design
• Project architecture publication in international conference or journal
• Architectural innovations promotion to ETSI standardization body.

WP2: Detailed System Design and Development, aiming at:

• Detailed software design
• System’s individual units and corresponding interfaces implementation.

WP3: Integration, Validation and System Experimental Evaluation, aiming at:

• Software units integration
• Validation of integrated system’s proper operation and verification that specifications are met 
• Experiments execution and measurements conducting for system evaluation
• Experimentation results processing