Abstract – The characteristics of the Cloud Computing paradigm make it attractive to be used along with other paradigms like mobile and pervasive computing, smart cities, etc. There is a need to develop new platforms in order to take advantage of those converged infrastructures, and to abstract its high heterogeneities and complexities. The design and development of such robust and efficient platforms is challenging, because of the high heterogeneities, complexities and the wide range of features they are supposed to offer.

In this paper, we define some fundamental requirements related to those converged paradigms and infrastructures, and by consequence the requirements for cloud-oriented platforms. We also develop an architectural model, based on a new concept, the semantically defined resource, which is the result of the need to simplify the definition of lightweight services and to introduce more semantics. We also present an example to illustrate how to design architectures basing on the new concept, and how the architectural model can be used concretely.