Mobile Applications - Guide to Cloud Computing for Business and Technology Managers - page 490

into their applications. This will ultimately enable solutions that work seam-
lessly across stationary networks and mobile environments. Customers will
be able to use mobile Web Services from multiple devices on both wired and
wireless networks.
The aim of the mobile Web Services effort is twofold:
1. To create a new environment that enables the IT industry and the
mobile industry to create products and services that meet customer
needs in a way not currently possible within the existing Web
Services practices. With Web Services being widely deployed as the
SOA of choice for internal processes in organizations, there is also an
emerging demand for using Web Services enabling mobile working
and e-business. By integrating Web Services and mobile computing
technologies, consistent business models can be enabled on a broad
array of endpoints: not just on mobile devices operating over mobile
networks but also on servers and computing infrastructure operat-
ing over the Internet. To make this integration happen at a techni-
cal level, mechanisms are required to expose and leverage existing
mobile network services. Also, practices for how to integrate the
various business needs of the mobile network world and their asso-
ciated enablers such as security must be developed. The result is a
framework, such as the Open Mobile Alliance, that demonstrates
how the Web Service specifications can be used and combined with
mobile computing technology and protocols to realize practical and
interoperable solutions.
Successful mobile solutions that help architect customers' ser-
vice infrastructures need to address security availability and scal-
ability concerns both at the functional level and at the end-to-end
solution level, rather than just offering fixed-point products. What
is required is a standard specification and an architecture that tie
together service discovery, invocation, authentication, and other
necessary components—thereby adding context and value to Web
Services. In this way, operators and enterprises will be able to lever-
age the unique capabilities of each component of the end-to-end
network and shift the emphasis of service delivery from devices
to the human user. Using a combination of wireless, broadband,
and wireline devices, users can then access any service on demand,
with a single identity and single set of service profiles, personal-
izing service delivery as dictated by the situation. There are three
important requirements to accomplish user (mobile-subscriber)-
focused delivery of mobile services: federated identity, policy, and
federated context.
Integrating identity, policy, and context into the overall mobile ser-
vices architecture enables service providers to differentiate the user