  Internet of Things and cloud computing are two technological paradigms that
reached widespread adoption in recent years. These paradigms are complementary:
IoT applications often rely on the computational resources of the cloud to
process the data generated by IoT devices. The highly distributed nature of IoT
applications and the giant amounts of data involved led to significant parts of
computation being moved from the centralized cloud to the edge of the network.
This gave rise to new hybrid paradigms, such as edge-cloud computing and fog
computing. Recent advances in IoT hardware, combined with the continued
increase in complexity and variability of the edge-cloud environment, led to an
emergence of a new vision of edge-cloud continuum: the next step of integration
between the IoT and the cloud, where software components can seamlessly move
between the levels of computational hierarchy. However, as this concept is very
new, there is still no established view of what exactly it entails. Several
views on the future edge-cloud continuum have been proposed, each with its own
set of requirements and expected characteristics. In order to move the
discussion of this concept forward, these views need to be put into a coherent
picture. In this paper, we provide a review and generalization of the existing
literature on edge-cloud continuum, point out its expected features, and
discuss the challenges that need to be addressed in order to bring about this
envisioned environment for the next generation of smart distributed
applications.
