Architectural concerns in distributed and mobile collaborative systems

There have been considerable attempts to integrate workflow management systems (WFMS), groupware systems, and business process modeling systems to provide a uniform platform for distributed and mobile collaboration (DMC) of geographically dispersed project teams. Such distributed and mobile teamwork defines new challenges for current IT platforms in terms of architecture and business-specific configurations. This paper discusses architectural concerns for such DMC systems and provides a framework for process aware distributed and mobile teamwork. This is achieved by integrating process- and workspace management requirements with peer-to-peer middleware, publish-subscribe, and community and user management. The paper discusses a three-layer architecture that integrates process awareness with the easy to use groupware (workspace) metaphor.