Intelligent Edge–Cloud Collaboration for Next-Generation Smart Applications

Abstract

The rapid growth of IoT, 5G, AI, and cyber-physical systems has accelerated the development of smart applications that require low-latency, reliable, and intelligent computing. Traditional cloud computing faces challenges in meeting these demands due to latency, bandwidth, and privacy limitations. Intelligent Edge–Cloud collaboration addresses these issues by combining edge computing with cloud resources for efficient workload distribution, AI-driven resource management, and adaptive service orchestration. This paper reviews recent advances in collaborative architectures, distributed AI, intelligent orchestration, and resource optimization. It also highlights key challenges, including interoperability, security, heterogeneous resource management, and sustainable computing, while demonstrating the potential of Edge–Cloud collaboration to improve computational efficiency, response time, energy efficiency, scalability, and privacy for next-generation smart applications.