International Business Machines Corporation

Cefla Societa' Cooperativa

Gianluca Bernardini

Luigi Pichetti

Mauro Arcese

Giuseppe Ciano

Claudio Marinelli

Rosario Gangemi

Antonio Di Cocco

Roberto Giordani

Salvatore D'Angelo

Stefano Sidoti

Alessandro Donatelli

Michele Crudele

Roberto Piras

Marco Martino

Angelo Albanese

Andrea Tortosa

Enrica Alberti

Valeria Perticara′

Elisabetta Rinaldi

Vinicio Bombacino

Paolo Ottaviano

Gaetano Ruggiero

Jayashree Ramanathan

Salvatore D'Alo

Alex Donatelli

Alessandro Ghezzi

Massimiliano Celli

Giulio Santoli

Valeria Perticara'

Damiano Bassani

Marcello Velati

Jon P Weiser

Matt Hartenbower

Cristian Giovannini

Alessandro Luigi Chiantera

Marco Mulas

Luigi Piciietti

Massimilian Celli

Aspects of the present invention disclose a method, computer program product, and system for managing geographic locations of resources utilized to operate and support a workload. The method includes one or more processors identifying a request. Processing resources of a first network accessible computing system, located at a first geographic location, are allocated to execute the request. The method further includes determining an originating geographic location of the request and determining parameters for executing the request. The method further includes identifying a second network accessible computing system based on the parameters. The second network accessible computing system is located at a second geographic location associated with the originating geographic location of the request. The method further includes determining whether to relocate at least a portion of processing resources allocated to execute the request from the first network accessible computing system to the second network accessible computing system.

Distributing computing resources based on location

Embodiments of the invention provide for obtaining, by a computing device, query data from a query submitted by a user on a social network; determining, by the computing device, a topic of the query by extracting information from the query data; matching, by the computing device, the topic to content stored in a content database; determining, by the computing device, that the content can be shared with the user based on relationship data dynamically derived from user activity within the social network; and initiating, by the computing device, sharing of the content with the user based on the determining that the content can be shared, wherein the user is not statically connected to the content or the author of the content in the social network.

Managing content sharing in a social network

Embodiments include systems, methods, and computer program products to perform an operation for managing different virtual machine images as a single virtual machine image. The operation generally includes generating a representation of a virtual machine (VM) image, and generating a first VM instance from the VM image. The representation of the VM image includes a set of artifacts associated with the VM image. The operation also includes receiving an indication of an available software update. Upon determining that the software update is applicable to the representation of the VM image, the operation further includes applying the software update to the first VM instance image.

Deploying updates to virtual machine images based on differences in artifacts

A method for cause analysis of a configuration exception occurred during the execution of a computer program on a programmable computer. The method includes executing the program on the computer. Exception information associated with the configuration exception may be extracted. The method may use context information and circumstances under which the configuration exception occurred. The method may also use data indicative of experiences of other developers that had a similar exception. A set of possible causes may be looked up from a knowledge base; wherein looking up the set of possible causes is based on context information related to the computer program.

Exception cause analysis during computer program execution

A method is proposed for operating a mobile computing device. A potentially dangerous condition for a user of the mobile computing device is detected according to its position. A responsiveness level of the user (to recognize the potentially dangerous condition) is determined according to one or more operative parameters of the mobile computing device. One or more interactive functionalities of the mobile computing device are controlled in response to the potentially dangerous condition according to the responsiveness level. A computer program and a computer program product for performing the method are also proposed. Moreover, a mobile computing device for implementing the method is proposed.

Controlling mobile computing device according to user's responsiveness

A computing system comprises a plurality of computing machines, each computing machine storing security information corresponding with the respective computing machine. Embodiments are directed to receiving an update request by a current computing machine for updating corresponding security information, updating the corresponding security information, determining other computing machines coupled with the current computing machine, and submitting, by the current computing machine, a further update request to each other computing machine that is coupled with the current computing machine.

Updating security information on multiple computing machines

Aspects generate application programming interface documents, wherein processors are configured to scan application programming interface code from representational state transfer request and from server-side responses, map matching application programming interface language definitions within a formal language definition database to matching language definition code values within the scanned code, and map matching object types within an application programming interface object type database to matching object code values within the scanned code. Aspects build schema definitions for the representational state transfer request that includes the matching application programming interface language definitions and object types in response to determining that the matching language definitions and object types are not included within any existing schema definition; and update existing schema definition in response to determining that the matching language definitions and object types are included within an existing schema definition.

Application programing interface document generator

Embodiments include systems and computer program products to perform an operation for managing different virtual machine images as a single virtual machine image. The operation generally includes generating a representation of a virtual machine (VM) image, and generating a first VM instance from the VM image. The representation of the VM image includes a set of artifacts associated with the VM image. The operation also includes receiving an indication of an available software update. Upon determining that the software update is applicable to the representation of the VM image, the operation further includes applying the software update to the first VM instance image.

Embodiments include methods to perform an operation for managing different virtual machine images as a single virtual machine image. The operation generally includes generating a representation of a virtual machine (VM) image, and generating a first VM instance from the VM image. The representation of the VM image includes a set of artifacts associated with the VM image. The operation also includes receiving an indication of an available software update. Upon determining that the software update is applicable to the representation of the VM image, the operation further includes applying the software update to the first VM instance image.

A method is described for performing system management operations on at least one target endpoint data processing apparatus of a distributed data processing system including a system management server adapted to the centralized system management of the endpoints of the distributed data processing system. The method comprises: at the system management server, receiving a system management activities plan including at least one system management activity to be performed on the at least one target endpoint; having the system management server executing the system management activities plan, wherein the executing the plan includes performing the at least one system management activity. Prior to executing the corresponding system management activity, having the system management server cause the execution, on the at least one target endpoint, of a simulated system management activity corresponding to and adapted to simulate the at least one system management activity in the plan so as to ascertain a capability of the at least one target endpoint of successfully executing the system management activity on the at least one target endpoint; and having the system management server execute the system management activity conditionally to a result of the execution of the simulated system management activity. Preferably, a selected corrective activity may be performed to remove the cause of the negative result of the simulated system management activity.

Centralized system management on endpoints of a distributed data processing system

A resource management solution based on management policies is provided, where each management policy comprises an indication of a management activity and at least one of the management policies comprising an indication of an application condition. A corresponding method comprises deploying a set of operative management policies assigned to each one of a set of target computing machines onto the target computing machine to cause the target computing machine to verify the application condition of each assigned operative management policy according to status information available on the target computing machine.

Resource management with conditioned policies

Centrally managing configuration of software application components includes creating configuration metadata for each component of the application; providing a specific configuration for a component; checking validity of the specific configuration using the metadata for said component; and monitoring the application component configuration for consistency with said specific configuration.

Configuration of componentized software applications

Centrally managing configuration of software application involves creating configuration metadata for each component of the application; providing a specific configuration for a component; checking validity of the specific configuration using the metadata for said component; and monitoring the application component configuration for consistency with said specific configuration.

Updating a plurality of computers is accomplished. A first message is created in an update source, where the first message includes a one or more instructions and an address of a message repository. The first message is transmitted to a first computer using either a Push or a Pull protocol. A second message is transmitted to the first computer using the Push or Pull protocol, the second message comprising data retrieved from the address in the first message. The first computer executes one or more of the instructions in the first message with at least some of the second message. The address in the first message is updated to match the address of the first computer. The updated first message is transmitting to a further one of the computers. Transmission of the second message is repeated to further ones in the plurality of computers until all of the plurality of computers have been updated.

Updating a plurality of computers

A software patch management solution () is proposed. The devised solution is based on the idea of automating the installation of the patches through a software distribution infrastructure. For this purpose, an automation engine () is added to a distribution server (). The automation engine interfaces with a patch provider () acting as a proxy, which stores a local copy of the patches () and of a patch catalogue () for detecting corresponding vulnerabilities. The automation engine automatically builds a distribution plan for deploying the patches to the relevant endpoints (), according to a vulnerability catalogue () that stores the actual exposures of the endpoints. The distribution plan arranges the required activities in the correct order, so as to minimize the number of rebooting of the endpoints; the distribution plan ends with an activity for scanning the endpoints, so as to update the vulnerability catalogue accordingly.

Growing community of inventors

Rome, Italy

Gianluca Bernardini