1522 results about "Level of service" patented technology

A full-featured e-mail system is used in both Internet-based and client-side (personal computer) forms. In each form, either basic e-mail service is provided to system subscribers or a secure, premium service with authentication, concealment, integrity, and non-repudiation functions for electronic messaging services is provided. In either form and at either level of service, subscribers can work off-line on their own computers with proprietary software loaded or, alternatively, on-line on any computer with an Internet connection. The system is interoperable, to preserve security, with all S/MIME compliant software applications, even for those users not subscribing to a service implementing the disclosed system. Digital certificates can be provided as a security service of the disclosed system, rather than requiring a second source with separate verification procedures. As additional optional features, the subscriber can control compression of outgoing attachment files, rather than having that function absent or operate in some automatic way. Decompression of such file attachments when received occurs automatically for subscribers, without having to invoke a different program or system. Interactive help features, book hierarchy uniformity for messages, accounts, certificates, virus warnings, and dual naming capability are also provided and available to subscribers in both the Web-based and the client-side application forms disclosed herein, and in both basic and premium service levels.

A personal biometric key system uses a personal identity code transmitted to a universal biometric electronic lock via a communication system and using a clock or GPS chip and allows a person to select one or more personal biometric methods and to be personally responsible for the maintenance of the sensor and its availability. The selection can be tailored to the particular needs and circumstances of the person using the key. The person can also change the personal biometric sensor when needs and circumstances change. The organization being accessed by the key can set minimum levels for what type sensor data they will accept and for level of services they will provide for a given type sensor.

The invention relates to controlling the participation and performance management of a distributed set of resources in a grid environment. The control is achieved by forecasting the behavior of a group of shared resources, their availability and quality of their performance in the presence of external policies governing their usage, and deciding the suitability of their participation in a grid computation. The system also provides services to grid clients with certain minimum levels of service guarantees using resources with uncertainties in their service potentials.

Methods, apparatuses and systems directed to adaptive monitoring of network application performance. In one implementation, the present invention improves processes used by enterprises to track, manage, and troubleshoot performance of network applications across distributed networks. In one implementation, the present invention allows for a network application performance monitoring scheme that tracks end-to-end performance of selected network applications on a passive basis, while selectively engaging more invasive (synthetic) approaches to tracking performance and troubleshooting issues when needed.

A method and system is provided intelligent network dispatchers that are capable of routing requests to one or more servers (e.g., LDAP servers) based on the requested application or the identity of the requester. The servers may be grouped into virtual clusters so that a particular cluster may service requests associated with a particular application or based on a type of customer (e.g., preferred or general customer) in order to grade levels of service. Also, a system resource monitor may provide continual monitoring of servers in virtual clusters to determine when one or more servers are overburdened or under burdened based on statistical performance data. As a servers performance changes, the system resource monitor may advise the intelligent network dispatcher causing a change in the rate of requests to the overburdened/under burdened server. The server may be temporarily removed from the virtual cluster until performance levels normalize. Further, servers may be re-assigned to other virtual clusters on demand to provide increased capacity to a virtual cluster.

A Time-Based Service Monitoring mechanism for monitoring Service Level Agreements (SLAs) over specific time intervals is described. To provide for the time-based monitoring of service, data is received for defining one or more tests for monitoring the level of network service that is being provided to a particular customer. Based on the received data, information is created and stored that defines a specific time range for when the one or more tests are to be enforced. The one or more tests are distributed to one or more agents that are configured to communicate with devices that are associated with the network. The devices are then configured to perform the one or more tests within the specific time range. Based on the results, the customer is provided information indicating whether they are receiving the level of service that has been guaranteed by the service provider over the specific time intervals.

A method and system for dynamically altering the delivery of web content to end users based on server load. Responsive to receiving a client request for web content, utilization metrics are collected from each device involved in delivering the web content. A device load level is determined for each device based on the utilization metrics, a system load level is determined for a subset of the devices having the same device type based on the device load levels, and a service level to provide to the client is determined based on the system load level. The request header is modified to specify the service level to provide to the client, wherein the service level indicates the web content variant to deliver. The request is sent with the modified header to a selected device which serves the web content according to the service level to the client.

In one embodiment, the invention relates to an adaptive engine for creating provisioning policies and rules for network storage provisioning, which can be driven by service level objectives. The service level objectives can be defined for a given quality of service (“QoS”) for one or more users or user groups, file systems, databases, or applications, or classes of file systems, databases, or applications. In addition, the service level objectives can define the cost, availability, time to provision, recoverability, performance and accessibility objectives for the file system, database or application.

The present invention describes a system for automatically monitoring and managing Service Level Agreements on behalf of Service Providers (such as Application Service providers). The system is based on a specialized SLA language that can translate complex or simple Service Level Agreements into measurable and controllable criterion. The system enables Application Service providers to set up customized Service Level Agreements with customers, and monitor, modify and control all aspects of these agreements, including billing, sales, Customer Relation Management, customer support and Quality of Service. The technology on which the present invention is based is a formula driven language that translates Service Level Agreement details into commands. As such these details can be tracked and processed to produce detailed reports and summaries.

A method and apparatus for adaptively targeting advertisements to a specific client computer from a server within a distributed data processing system is provided. As a user of the client browses the World Wide Web, the material that is downloaded to the client constitutes a datastream. At some location during the routing of the datastream, either on the server or at the client, the datastream is scanned to generate a list of keywords that are present within the datastream. The datastream may be analyzed in real-time or cached and analyzed on a delayed basis. The generated list of keywords represents a summary of the content that appears to be the focus of interest of the user. The keywords are compared against a database of advertisements, and the server selects an advertisement that matches the user's area of interest in comparison to the analysis of the user's browsing history. The selected advertisement is then inserted into the datastream to be routed to the client. In consideration for viewing targeted advertisements and to entice a Web viewer to allow the monitoring of a datastream so that targeted advertisements may be placed into the datastream, a Web viewer may receive online connection service for free, for a reduced cost, at a premium level of service, or for other some other value, such as frequent viewer credits that may be exchanged for goods and services.

A system and a method to manage a data center, the method including, for example, retrieving a physical topology of a service; determining from the physical topology a concrete type of a resource for the service; and selecting an actual instance of the resource in the data center. The actual instance having the concrete type and the actual instance selected such that a consumption of the actual instance does not violate at least one of a constraint and a policy.

This invention provides a system or method to provide dynamically packaged Cloud services to customers via a Cloud services registry. The Cloud services registry is dynamic and operates by polling different Cloud service providers and Cloud service databases to ensure that the Cloud services registry is up to date with the latest available Cloud services. The Cloud services registry is available for queries from Cloud customers and abstracts multiple Cloud service providers. By abstracting the Cloud services, the dynamic Cloud services registry creates a modular package of different services from different Cloud service providers based on the query and requested priority for services. The dynamic Cloud registry is dynamically updated based on the level of services that the provider has available. The dynamic registry determines what service best matches the requirements from a Cloud service request (CSR) and returns a personalized set of matching services.

Methods, systems, computer program products, and a method of doing business are disclosed for autonomically provisioning network-accessible services in a decentralized network having a federated grid infrastructure. Autonomic, grid, and web services-related technologies, standards, and concepts are leveraged. More particularly, web service behaviors (augmented as grid services, according to preferred embodiments) are autonomically provisioned (i.e., dynamically distributed) via a grid of hosting services. In preferred embodiments, this dynamic distribution occurs in response to (and as a function of) external catalysts, such as algorithms that monitor designated resources (e.g., to proactively determine when the commitments in a utility service provider's service level agreements are in jeopardy).

Improving the utilization of physical resources and reducing energy consumption in a cloud data center includes providing a plurality of virtual machines in the cloud data center; periodically reallocating resources of the plurality of virtual machines according to a current resource demand of the plurality of virtual machines in order to minimize a number of active physical servers required to handle a workload of the physical servers; maximizing a mean inter-migration time between virtual machine migrations under the quality of service requirement based on a Markov chain model; and using a multisize sliding window workload estimation process for a non-stationary workload to maximize the mean inter-migration time.

Systems and methods for recording programs using a user's equipment and a network recording device are provided. An interactive television application may determine whether the user's equipment has sufficient resources (e.g., tuners or space) to record a program selected for recording. If the interactive television application determines that the user's equipment does not have sufficient resources, the interactive television application may select, automatically or in response to a user instruction, the program for recording with a network recording device. In some embodiments, the user may have to pay for the use of the network recording device, or may be required to purchase a given tier level of service. The interactive television application may play back programs from the network recording device as VOD offerings, or may direct the network recording device to transfer recorded programs to the user's equipment when it has sufficient resources.

The embodiments provide generating a dedicated virtual machine image (DVMI) including functionality for a target service provider and launching the DVMI in the host device as a dedicated virtual machine (DVM). A measurement of the DVMI and/or the launched DVM, as a Trusted Dedicated Virtual Machine (TDVM), is transmitted to the target service provider server. The target service provider determines a trust level for the TDVM, based upon the measurement and provides a level of service by the target service provider server to the TDVM, according to the trust level of the TDVM.

In an embodiment, a computing system comprises a plurality of resources, a first manager process for allocating the plurality of resources on a dynamic basis according to service level parameters, and a plurality of computing domains, wherein at least one application, a respective second manager process, and a respective performance monitor process are executed within each computing domain, and wherein the performance monitor generates performance data related to the execution of the at least one application and the second manager process requests additional resources from the first manager process in response to analysis of performance data in view of at least one service level parameter.

The present invention pertains to improved communication quality and security of transmission in cellular communication networks. A customer has the option to pay different fees for different tiers of service relating to voice quality, bandwidth access, and different tiers of service relating to communications security. Higher tiers may guarantee a specific vocoder or bit rate is used, or guarantee a specific encryption protocol is use to ensure secure communications. Different tiers may be associated with customers' records for billing purposes. The network may afford high end devices higher voice quality and/or security via a lookup table indicating what level of service is associated with a given device. Calling or receiving devices may negotiate with each other to change to a more robust vocoder or bit rate to ensure a higher quality and/or security. Furthermore, the user may opt to change the quality and/or security level before or during a call.