A Conceptual Framework for Provisioning Context-aware Mobile Cloud Services

We observe two of the recent trends in information technology. Cloud Computing (CC) is widely accepted as an effective reuse paradigm. Mobile Computing with Mobile Internet Device (MID) such as iPhones and Android devices becomes a convenient alternative to personal computers by integrating mobility, communication, software functionality, and entertainment. Due to the resource limitations of MIDs, cloud services become an ideal alternative to software installed on MIDs. A key feature of MIDs is the capability of sensing users’ contexts such as location, acceleration, longitude, latitude and movement. Hence, it is tempting to configure and provide cloud services for the specific context sensed, such as location-specific Map service. In this paper, we present a framework for enabling context-aware mobile services. The framework enables tasks of capturing context, determining what context-specific adaptation is needed, tailoring candidate services for the context, and running the adapted service. The net result of context-aware services is for consumers to receive better services which fit to the current context of the consumers.