Web services have become increasingly important over the past decades. Versatility and platform independence are just some of their advantages. On the other hand, grid computing enables the efficient distribution of computing resources. Together, they provide a great source of computing power that can be particularly leveraged by mobile devices.

Mobile computing enables information creation, processing, storage and communication without location constraints [63], not only improving business' operational efficiency [63] but actually changing a way of life. However, the convenience of anytime and anywhere communication is counterbalanced by small screens, limited computing power and battery life. Despite these limitations, mobile devices can extend grid functionality by bringing to the mix not only mobile access but sensing capabilities as well, gathering information from their surroundings through built in mechanisms, such as microphone, camera, GPS and even accelerometers.

Prior work has already demonstrated the possibility of enabling Web Services Resource Framework (WSRF) access to grid resources from mobile device clients in the WSRFME project [39], where a representative Nokia S60 Smartphone application was created on a framework, which extends the JSR-172 functionality to achieve WSRF compliance. In light of today's mobile phone market diversity, this thesis extends the solution proposed by WSRF-ME to non-Java ME phones and to Android devices in particular. Android-based device numbers have grown considerably over the past couple of years despite its recent creation and reduced availability of mature software tools. Therefore, Android's web service capabilities are studied and the original framework is analyzed in order to propose a modified framework version that achieves and documents WSRF compliant communication form Android for the first time. As a case study, an illustrative mobile File Explorer application is developed to match the modified framework's functionality to the original WSRF-ME's use case.

An additional case study, the LIGO Monitor application, shows the viability of mobile web services for monitoring purposes in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Observatory (LIGO) grid environment for the first time. The context that an actual application implementation such as LIGO provides, allows some of the challenges of real mobile grid clients to surface. As a result, the observations made during this development give way to the drafting of a preliminary set of guidelines for Globus service implementation suitable for Android consumption that still remain open for proof in future works.