Towards a software architecture for distributed and mobile collaborative systems

Current trends in collaborative business emphasize the importance of business process support within and between organizations. These process participants are increasingly distributed and mobile. It remains a challenge to utilize software as to share and exchange ideas and work on collaborative activities across locations and different mobile devices, while still business process aware. In this paper we develop a five-layer software architecture for distributed and mobile collaborative systems, which provides mobility of context to its group members. This architecture defines a foundation for the flexible integration of collaborative systems (such as workflow management, groupware or business process modeling) with teamwork services that support distributed and mobile collaboration.