Multi-Tiered Cloud Reporting Service Anonymization
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current cloud infrastructure environments face challenges in providing efficient, cost-effective, and secure access to software products and services for tenants, particularly in managing usage data and billing across multiple realms, leading to complexity and increased costs for organizations.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of a multi-tiered reporting service within a cloud environment that monitors and processes usage data across realms, anonymizes user identification, and aggregates consumption information for billing purposes, enabling operators to manage subscriptions and pricing effectively while providing detailed resource usage insights to both operators and cloud providers.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If usage data is collected and processed for billing purposes across multiple realms, then billing accuracy and resource management improve, but system complexity and processing time increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the cloud environment into multiple realms (first realm, second realm, etc.), each with its own operator tenant that independently manages usage data collection and processing. This segmentation allows billing accuracy to be maintained in each realm while distributing system complexity across multiple independent units rather than concentrating it in a single centralized system.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces intermediary components including realm operators who act as mediators between end users and the cloud infrastructure provider. These intermediaries collect, process, and aggregate usage data locally within their realms before submitting to the central billing system, reducing the direct complexity burden on the central system while maintaining accurate billing through multi-layered data validation.
2Productivity
If detailed usage data is provided to operators for resource management, then resource allocation efficiency improves, but data security and privacy risks increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by providing detailed usage data to operators at the realm level where it is needed for resource management, while the cloud infrastructure provider receives only aggregated and anonymized data. This ensures operators have full visibility for efficient resource allocation in their specific realms without exposing sensitive user information to the central provider or other realms.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts personally identifiable information (PII) and sensitive user identification data from the detailed usage records before providing data to operators and certainly before providing data to the cloud infrastructure provider. This extraction maintains the operational utility of usage data for resource management while removing security and privacy risks associated with sensitive information.
3Measurement precision
If multi-tiered reporting is implemented across multiple realms, then billing accuracy and resource tracking improve, but processing time and computational resources increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements preliminary action by having operators in each realm collect, validate, and aggregate usage data locally before submitting to the central billing system. This pre-processing at the realm level ensures data accuracy is established early in the pipeline, reducing the need for complex validation and reconciliation operations at the central level, thereby reducing overall processing time despite the multi-tiered architecture.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent merges usage data from multiple realms into aggregated summaries at the cloud infrastructure provider level, combining only the essential billing-relevant information rather than transmitting all detailed records centrally. This merging approach maintains accurate usage tracking across realms while significantly reducing the computational burden and processing time at the central billing system.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods provide tiered assessment of use of services in a cloud environment. An operator cloud environment running on computers including microprocessors, wherein the operator cloud environment is deployed within a first realm owned by an operator tenant of the realm, a set of software products provided to the first realm from a cloud infrastructure provider of the cloud environment for access via the first realm by a plurality of end users as vendor cloud services, and a metering service. Usage data that records usage of services in a realm includes identification data associating user entities with their usage of the services is provided to the operator tenant associated with control of the realm. A second set of data is generated by processing the usage data to remove or convert the identification data and is provided to the cloud infrastructure provider associated with control of the cloud environment.