Current trends and future directions in community edge clouds

Cloud computing promises access to computing resources that is cost-effective, elastic and easily scalable. With few key cloud providers in the field, despite the benefits, there are issues like vendor lock-in, privacy and control over data. In this paper we focus on alternative models of cloud computing, like the community clouds at the edge which are built collaboratively using the resources contributed by the users, either through solely relying on users´ machines, or using them to augment existing cloud infrastructures. We study community network clouds in the context of other initiatives in community cloud computing, mobile cloud computing, social cloud computing, and volunteer computing, and analyse how the context of community networks can support the community clouds.