Context and the Cloud: Situational Awareness in Mobile Systems

There has been a paradigm shift in the way users interact with computerized systems and applications. This is driven by the increasing power and ubiquity of 'smart' mobile devices and the traction being generated in Cloud-based systems and the long-term evolution in service provision using Software-as-a-Service. These developments are supported by the rapid and far reaching developments in the related networking infrastructures. This paper considers the nature of Situational Awareness and addresses augmented context, Web 2.0, social media the Internet of Things, and the complexity of context. Mobile networks are considered with large-scale distributed systems and Cloud-based solutions. An illustration of the potential usage of collaborative interactions is presented to demonstrate the benefits which may be derived and the challenges faced. The paper closes with a discussion and conclusions including the identification of future directions for research and open research questions. The paper concludes that augmented context and Situational Awareness forms a central role in the effective provision of services going forward in Cloud-based systems accessed using mobile systems.