Intent-driven Distributed Applications Management over Compute and Network Resources in the Computing Continuum

Intent-driven orchestration enables organizations to achieve greater automation, integration, and intelligence of their compute and network resources by defining their objectives and policies in a more abstract and holistic way, while letting the orchestration system handle the coordination, optimization, and adaptation of the resources in response to changing needs and conditions. The trend for the development of intent-driven orchestration mechanisms has been growing in recent years as the deployment of distributed applications in the computing continuum has become more complex and diverse. In this manuscript we detail a novel approach for the management of distributed applications in the computing continuum. A hierarchical decision making scheme is proposed where an entity in a specific level of the hierarchy has the responsibility for the management of the overall application or a part of it, without having the control of all the management actions. The control is distributed across various entities that have to collaborate towards some joint objectives. Both compute and network resources management is considered that may be provided by the same or different infrastructure providers.