International Business Machines Corporation

Asit Dan

Dinkar Sitaram

Daniel Manuel Dias

Heiko Hary Ludwig

Martin G Kienzle

William H Tetzlaff

Claus T Jensen

Philip Shi-lung Yu

Hidayatullah Habeebullah Shaikh

Pradeep Janakiraman

Arun Kwangil Iyengar

Richard Pervin King

Francis Nicholas Parr

Daniela Rosu

Thao Ngoc Nguyen

John F Schumacher

Junehwa Song

Hendrik Wagner

Ashis Tarafdar

Henner Gimpel

Manoj N Kumar

David Louis Kaminsky

Kun-Lung Wu

Philip Shilung Yu

David Mark Ogle

Bishwaranjan Bhattacharjee

Tamar Eilam

Steve Richard White

Nagui Halim

Rajiv R Ramaswami

Jai P Menon

John Joseph Rofrano

John Arthur Pershing, Jr

James Thomas Rayfield

Alexander M Keller

Michael H Kalantar

Robert Filepp

Avraham Leff

Alexander V Konstantinou

Andrew Neil Trossman

Brent Tzion Hailpern

Abdul Allam

Gautam Kar

Martin W Sachs

Linh Hue Lam

Noshir Cavas Wadia

Kazuo Iwano

Ambuj Goyal

Daniel Manual Dias

Andrea Schmidt

Aditya Agrawal

Rowan L Dordick

Kavitha Ranganathan

Nayyar P Shahabuddin

Perwez Shahabuddin

Mircea Simion Ioan Avram

A process development and run time tool identifies dependent relationships between information sources and processes of an enterprise system at design time. The process development and run time tool determines a business value and business risk for each process and stores this information in an information source and process dependency table. The process development and run time tool determines if a particular information source is a critical business risk and if so adds redundancy for the critical risk information source and/or fault tolerance into the process design. An operating system assembles the dependent processes for run time evaluation. If a dependent information source fails at run time, the process development and run time tool identifies each process within the enterprise system that is dependent upon this failed information source. The process development and run time tool informs all stakeholders that rely on information from the failed information source, then prioritizes the elimination of failed information source defects that exceed a predetermined business risk threshold. The process development and run time tool may terminate at risk business processes that exceed a predetermined business risk threshold.

Business process development and run time tool

Techniques are disclosed for allocation of resources under the control of resource managers and the choice and coordination of resource acquisition protocols to communicate with these resource managers. The resource managers may be distributed and heterogeneous. For example, a technique for use by a service provider for allocating one or more resources from multiple resources associated with multiple resource managers based on at least one service agreement offer from a service client comprises the following steps/operations. At least one service agreement offer is obtained. A resource allocation is automatically determined based on the obtained service agreement offer. The automated step/operation of determining the resource allocation comprises: (i) coordinating selection of a resource acquisition protocol from among multiple resource acquisition protocols for use in communicating with the multiple resource managers to acquire one or more resources associated therewith; and (ii) evaluating a performance associated with one or more of the multiple resource acquisition protocols.

Methods and apparatus for coordinating and selecting protocols for resources acquisition from multiple resource managers

Techniques are disclosed for automated provisioning of resources to fulfill a service agreement. For example, a technique for use by a service provider for automatically provisioning one or more resources based on at least one service agreement offer of a service client comprises the following steps/operations. The at least one service agreement offer is obtained. At least one implementation plan template is obtained. A provisioning description is then automatically derived in accordance with the service agreement offer and the implementation plan template, wherein the provisioning description is usable for configuring one or more resources such that a service may be provided to the service client.

Methods and apparatus for agreement-based automated service provisioning

Techniques for extending a process model with specification of information consumed. A receiving operation receives specification of process information consumed by a process implementation of the process model. Another receiving operation receives specification of activity process information consumed by activities employed by the process implementation of the process model. The information consumed is information that is or needs to be used without being passed through exposed interfaces. A generating operation automatically generates an extended process model using a computer processor. The extended process model includes specification of exposed interfaces, the process information consumed by the process implementation, and the activity information consumed by the activity implementation. Further embodiments includes techniques for identifying information inconsistencies in the extended process model if the information consumed not available as called for by the extended process model.

Capturing information accessed, updated and created by processes and using the same for validation of consistency

Techniques for extending a service model with specification of information consumed. The service model includes specification of at least one exposed interface. A receiving operation receives specification of information consumed by a service implementation of the service model. The information consumed is information that is or needs be utilized by the service implementation without being passed through the exposed interface. A generating operation automatically generates an extended service model using a computer processor. The extended service model includes specification of the exposed interface and specification of the information consumed by the service implementation.

Capturing information accessed, updated and created by services and using the same for validation of consistency

A method for information service identification during service modeling of a service oriented architecture (SOA) architected computing system includes loading a business process defined by different business services in memory of a service modeling tool executing in a host computing platform. The method further includes identifying different information elements directed for access by the business services and determining a set of information transactions for the identified different information elements. The method yet further includes generalizing the set of information transactions into a candidate list of information services. The method even yet further includes selecting from amongst the candidate list a selection of information services for incorporation into the business process. Finally, the method includes refining the business services of the business process to invoke the selection of information services to access the identified different information elements.

Identifying and defining information services for delivery in a service oriented architecture

An on-demand manager provides an improved distributed data processing system for facilitating dynamic allocation of computing resources among multiple domains based on a current workload and service level agreements. Based on a service level agreement, the on-demand manager monitors and predicts the load on the system. If the current or predicted load cannot be handled with the current system configuration, the on-demand manager determines additional resources needed to handle the workload. If the service level agreement violations cannot be handled by reconfiguring resources at a domain, the on-demand manager sends a resource request to other domains. These other domains analyze their own commitments and may accept the resource request, reject the request, or counter-propose with an offer of resources and a corresponding service level agreement. Once the requesting domain has acquired resources, workload load balancers are reconfigured to allocate some of the workload from the requesting site to the acquired remote resources.

Method for supporting transaction and parallel application workloads across multiple domains based on service level agreements

A method of dynamically generating a presentation sequence from a plurality of authored presentation documents includes the steps of receiving the plurality of authored presentation documents from a plurality of data sources; applying the plurality of authored presentation documents to a set of presentation rules; and generating the presentation sequence in response to the applying step.

System and method for programmatic generation of continuous media presentations

A method for measuring performance of system. The method includes the steps of retrieving a metric definition from a declarative metrics specification, obtaining a list of computing nodes from a database that are currently assigned to the metric definition, obtaining resource data provided by the computing nodes in the list of computing nodes and determining the metric of system performance based on the metric definition and the resource data. The computing nodes in the list of computing nodes are nodes of a cluster of nodes having a dynamically varying node count.

Mechanism and system for programmable measurement of aggregate metrics from a dynamic set of nodes

A system and method for disseminating policies to multiple policy-based components includes a policy producer which generates a group of policies to be enforced. A policy disseminator classifies each policy with a type, and for each policy type, the policy disseminator identifies policy-based components that handle a corresponding policy type. The policy disseminator sends specific policy types from the group of policies to each policy-based component that can handle that specific policy type.

Automated dissemination of enterprise policy for runtime customization of resource arbitration

A system and method for automated design deployment for distributed applications includes providing a node with at least one requirement attribute in an application description. A repository for infrastructure elements is searched for candidate infrastructure elements for that satisfy the at least one requirement attribute. A candidate infrastructure element that best satisfies the at least one requirement attribute in the application description is substituted in place of the node with the at least one requirement attribute.

Automated design for deployment of a distributed application using constraint propagation

A device for limiting access to data in a database includes an input for receiving a request to access data in a database and a processor that is communicatively coupled to the input and allows access to the data in the database. A data counter for counting an instantaneous rate of data flow and/or a volume of data accessed and a comparator for determining if the data flow and/or the volume of data accessed in the database exceeds a previously specified value is also included, wherein the processor disallows access to the data in the database in response to the instantaneous rate and/or the volume of data exceeding the previously specified value.

Identification, notification, and control of data access quantity and patterns

A method and system for indemnifying an insurance purchaser by an insurance provider against losses resulting from specified events. In one embodiment, the specified events include quality of service penalties of a service level agreement between a service provider and service purchaser. The invention may include at least one risk metric monitored via a communication network, such that a premium payable to the insurer by the insurance purchaser is dependent on the risk metric. In a particular configuration of the invention, the risk metric is monitored in real-time or near real-time.

Insurance for service level agreements in e-utilities and other e-service environments

The present invention concerns methods and apparatus for implementing a multi-user advance reservation system where reservations are specified in terms of flexible constraints, inflexible constraints and business values. The specification of reservations in this manner allows an entity managing the reservation system to arbitrate among reservations received from a user population with a view toward maximizing business value across the user population. In methods and apparatus of the present invention, penalties and rewards associated with various reservation outcomes can be specified in reservations to assist in business value maximization. In an example, a reservation having a low business value may be declined when there is a significant possibility that a reservation having a high business would be submitted during the pendency of service delivery to the user issuing the reservation with a low business value.

Methods and apparatus for implementing a flexible multi-user advance reservation system where reservation requests are specified in terms of multiple options and where each option has an associated business value

A method, system, computer program product, and data structure for processing requests for services in a networked data processing system is provided. In one embodiment a request is received by a service provider. The request includes defined allowable actions and request definition compositions. The request also includes a plurality of actions wherein the relationships between the plurality of actions are defined. The service provider processes the plurality of actions according to the defined relationships and generates a response.

System and method for composite business interactions in electronic commerce

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Pleasantville, NY, United States of America

Asit Dan