A Framework for the Decentralisation and Management of Collaborative Applications in Ubiquitous Computing Environments

When deploying collaborative applications such as Instant Messaging in ubiquitous computing environments significant enhancements can be afforded by offering additional context information, such as location information. However, such environments exert key challenges such as increased diversity of ownership and ad hoc, intermittent network connectivity that suits more decentralized computing architectures. This paper examines how a migration to a more decentralized collaborative architecture can be achieved together with a decentralization of the management of collaborative activities.