Mobile and Cloud Computing are the two dominant transformations driving the IT industry in the recent and moreover, upcoming years.
Interestingly, both technology domains seem to be a natural match but no technologically firm and sound framework exists. This important and equally comprehensive problem statement is at the very core of the MobileCloud research theme.
We define MobileCloud as Mobile Devices + Mobile Network + Decentralised Computing + Smart Storage offered as One Service – On-Demand, Elastic and Pay-As-You-Go.
The top-level objectives of our MobileCloud research are

• to develop a novel architectures and technologies, using proof-of-concept prototypes, to lead the way from current mobile frameworks (devices, networks, etc) to fully cloud-based mobile system, and
• to extend cloud computing so as to support on-demand and elastic provisioning of novel mobile services.
• to develop novel concepts for operational and business support systems that fully embrace the notion of MobileCloud

Research under our MobileCloud theme investigates, implements, and evaluates the technological foundations for MobileCloud systems. These systems will meet real-time performance needs, support efficient and elastic use and sharing of both mobile device, radio access, and mobile core network resources. Mobile network functionality will run on enhanced mobile cloud platforms leveraging commodity hardware. This requires extensions towards higher decentralization and enhancing those functionalities to elastically scale up and down based on load. The end-to-end control and management orchestrates infrastructure and services across several technological domains: device, wireless, mobile core and data centres, providing guaranteed end-to-end SLAs and AAA as well as service mobility. Ultimately, MobileCloud platforms will allow smart devices to seamlessly exploit the power of the cloud by offloading computational and storage load transparently for the user and at the same time consume all sorts of cloud services with guaranteed service and experienced quality.
Besides the technological aspects, MobileCloud research identifies and evaluates overarching novel business models that support the exploitation of the mobile cloud in various multi-stakeholder scenarios. MobileCloud architectures are evaluated in realistic scenarios and with a set of concrete use-cases, based on actual applications. These evaluations are done from diverse viewpoints, exploiting research in well-balanced and representative consortia, including leading industry from the telecommunication as well as the cloud computing segments.