To efficiently integrate dynamic, autonomous and potentially mobile participants into a scalable, robust system of distributed but interconnected parts is especially challenging. However, this integration is essential to offer necessary abilities that can't be offered by single participants alone. These abilities can reflect the needs of participants of the system, or they can reflect a request for functionality that is brought to the system as a whole from outside. Both situations share the common characteristic that static or manual integration is impossible under the assumption of a dynamic environment of autonomous participants. Therefore means have to be developed to accomplish the necessary integration in a self-organized manner.

It is the goal of the center to efficiently integrate the expertise present at the Institute of Computer Science in this field into a unified approach. The competence center therefore aims to combine knowledge from a multitude of fields of activity within computer science, like distributed grid computing, autonomic computing, peer-to-peer applications or mobile platform integration.

The approach to be developed will be evaluated on the basis of scenarios taken from various areas of research like bioinformatics with a focus on special so called data grids, computational physics and engineering with a focus on classical compute grids or sensor networks. These areas are placed directly at the department for computer science at the FSU Jena. The fields of eCommerce and telecommunication will supplement that palette of immediately available areas of application as they are available through partnerships with the local industries. As a matter of course new partners with new fields of application will be welcomed. The competence center itself is open to everybody interested and not limited to the department of computer science or the FSU Jena. The current members are listed under Participants.