Cloud Discovery System for License Compliance and Inventory
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Solution Overview
Problem
Users face difficulties in tracking and managing license compliance and obtaining comprehensive information about cloud-based web services, as existing systems lack efficient methods to identify and compare virtual server instances and software applications across different platforms, leading to challenges in cost analysis and licensing compliance.
Innovation Solution
A cloud-based discovery and inventory system that retrieves and enriches information about computing devices and cloud instances using proprietary databases, combining data from multiple sources to provide users with a comprehensive view of object features, requirements, and licensing status through a user interface.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If users rely on basic information provided by web services, then information completeness is limited, but users can access information quickly without complex data aggregation
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary system that aggregates information from multiple sources including web services, third-party sources, and user-generated content. This intermediary layer consolidates disparate information sources into a unified interface, resolving the contradiction by providing comprehensive information without requiring users to directly manage complex data aggregation across multiple platforms
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates a universal platform that performs multiple functions: collecting information from web services, enriching it with third-party data, enabling user contributions, and providing comparison capabilities. This multi-functional approach consolidates what would otherwise require separate tools and processes into a single system, addressing both information completeness and complexity concerns
2Measurement precision
If users manually track cloud instances across multiple platforms, then license compliance tracking becomes accurate, but time and effort required increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements self-service capabilities where agents automatically discover and track cloud instances across multiple platforms without requiring manual user intervention. The system autonomously collects instance data, updates licensing information, and maintains compliance records, thereby achieving accurate tracking while eliminating the time investment that would be required for manual monitoring
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary actions by proactively discovering and cataloging cloud instances before compliance issues arise. By continuously monitoring and pre-tracking instances across platforms, the system prepares compliance data in advance, allowing users to review and make decisions without time-consuming manual tracking when needed
3Loss of information
If users access multiple third-party sources for product information, then information comprehensiveness improves, but system complexity and data integration difficulty increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges information from multiple third-party sources into a unified data structure. By consolidating product information, pricing data, feature sets, and requirements from various external sources into a single integrated system, the approach achieves comprehensive information coverage while abstracting away the integration complexity that would otherwise exist across multiple separate access points
Data Source
AI summary
Information from a variety of different sources may be used to enrich information about an object retrieved from a computing device/instance associated with a computing network (or web service provider). The additional information from the different sources provides to a user a more comprehensive set of information that may not be easily found (or even available) via sources associated with the computing network. As such, the additional information is beneficial in assisting users in making decisions regarding the purchase, licensing, and use of different objects (e.g. software, hardware, web services) associated with the computing network.