Temporary or partial offloading of mobile application functions to a cloud-based environment

Abstract

Techniques for temporarily and/or partially offloading mobile applications to one or more remote virtual machines in a server include establishing an application copy of a mobile application installed on a mobile device at a remote virtual machine, suspending the mobile application on the mobile device and offloading operations of the mobile application to the application copy at the remote virtual machine for a period of time. Suspending the mobile application and offloading its operations to the remote virtual machine for the period of time reduces consumption of resources on the mobile device. The virtual machine executes the application copy in the same manner the mobile device would execute the mobile application and transfers data from the execution to the mobile application at the end of the period of time to allow the mobile application to update itself and resume its operation without any loss of data or functionality.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A method of offloading operations of a mobile application, comprising:
 establishing an application copy of a mobile application installed on a mobile device at a remote virtual machine;   suspending the mobile application on the mobile device; and   offloading operations of the mobile application to the application copy at the remote virtual machine for a period of time.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein suspending the mobile application and offloading the operations of the mobile application to the remote virtual machine for the period of time reduces consumption of resources by the mobile application on the mobile device. 
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 2 , wherein offloading the operations of the mobile application to the application copy at the remote virtual machine for the period of time reduces consumption of at least two of power, data, memory or CPU resources by the mobile application on the mobile device. 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 receiving data generated or obtained by the application copy during the period of time the operations of the mobile application was offloaded to the application copy; and   updating the mobile application with the received data.   
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 4 , further comprising:
 resuming the mobile application on the mobile device upon updating the mobile application with the received data, wherein the received data includes new or changed data.   
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 determining the period of time during which the operations of the mobile application are offloaded to the application copy at the remote virtual machine based on at least one of: user instructions, user activity patterns or a state of the mobile application.   
     
     
         7 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 selecting the mobile application from a plurality of mobile applications on the mobile device for offloading based on user instructions.   
     
     
         8 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 tracking resource consumption by a plurality of mobile applications on the mobile device; and   selecting the mobile application for offloading based on the resource consumption that is tracked.   
     
     
         9 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein establishing the application copy of the mobile application on the mobile device at the remote virtual machine includes transferring application data associated with the mobile application to the remote virtual machine to facilitate the application copy to be executed on the remote virtual machine in the same manner the mobile application would be executed on the mobile device. 
     
     
         10 . A mobile device, comprising:
 a memory;   a processor disposed in communication with the memory and configured to execute a plurality of instructions stored in the memory to:
 transfer configuration data corresponding to a mobile application on the mobile device to a remote server to establish a proxy of the mobile application on a virtual machine hosted by the remote server; 
 suspend the mobile application on the mobile device; and 
 offload operations of the mobile application to the proxy of the mobile application at the virtual machine for a period of time.