Situation-specific aggregation of information as well as software functionality is at the heart of Situational Software. One of the questions that emerge is: "Who performs that aggregation?"

There are two basic scenarios that answer this question. However, mixed forms are possible and are advantageous in many cases:.

• Software support for a particular situation is developed by a software vendor or IT department, and all appropriate information is being integrated a-priori. When the user encounters this situation, the pre-integrated software situation is presented to the user.
• If no such pre-developed, pre-integrated software support for a particular situation is available (or if the user decides otherwise), the situational software platform aggregates and integrates the elements of the situation automatically, or semi-automatically (i.e. supported by some form of user interaction)..

A mixed form would be one in which the basic software support for the situation has been pre-integrated, but to which additional capabilities can be added by the user.

Which of these alternatives is employed by a user for a particular situation depends on a number of factors, such as the availability of pre-integrated situational support (which intimately depends on the business case for such integration work for a particular situation, which then has to be high-value and frequently occurring), the quality of the match between the actual situation and the prototype situation the developer had in mind, the economics of the situation, the economics and business models faced by participants or software/content/capability providers to the situation, and others.

Technically, the adaptive case is much harder, so we expect that pre-integrated situational support will remain the dominant form of Situational Software for some time, although the mix will likely change over time.