Method and system for mobile applications update in the cloud

• US 10,432,752 B2
• Filed: 04/12/2017
• Issued: 10/01/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 04/12/2017
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Lee, Tien Hiong, Levinski, Konstantin, Low, Chee Meng, Tang, Weng Sing
• Primary Examiner(s): Gilles, Jude Jean
• Application Number:
  US15/485,988
• Publication Number:
  US 20180302495A1
• Time in Patent Office: 902 Days
• Field of Search: 709219
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3668 Software testing software testing in telephone exchanges H04M3/242, testing of hardware G06F11/22
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/65 Updates security arrangements therefor G06F21/57
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/455 Emulation; Interpretation; Software simulation, e.g. virtualisation or emulation of application or operating system execution engines
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1095 Replication or mirroring of data, e.g. scheduling or transport for data synchronisation between network nodes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/34 involving the movement of software or configuration parameters network booting or remote initial program loading [RIPL] G06F9/4416

Abstract

A method, system and a computer program product are provided for updating mobile device applications at a central cloud server by establishing an application virtual machine representation of a first mobile device application installed on a mobile device; updating the application virtual machine representation at the central cloud server to perform software configuration, installation, upgrade, optimization, testing, or maintenance tasks on the application virtual machine representation without using computational resources at the mobile device; and sending the mobile device one or more modules that were changed when updating the application virtual machine representation for integration into the first mobile device application installed on the mobile device.

Claims

1. A computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having a computer readable program stored therein, wherein the computer readable program, when executed on an information handling system, causes the system to update mobile device applications at one or more central servers by:

establishing, at the one or more central servers, an application virtual machine representation of a first mobile device application installed on a mobile device;

updating the application virtual machine representation at the one or more central servers to perform software configuration, installation, upgrade, optimization, testing, or maintenance tasks on the application virtual machine representation without using computational resources at the mobile device; and

sending, to the mobile device that, one or more modules that were changed when updating the application virtual machine representation for integration into the first mobile device application installed on the mobile device.

2. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the computer readable program, when executed on the system, causes the system to suspend a virtual machine implementation of the first mobile device application on the mobile device before establishing the application virtual machine representation of the first mobile device application.

3. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the computer readable program, when executed on the system, causes the system to establish the application virtual machine representation by constructing, at the one or more central servers, an isolated sandbox for running the application virtual machine representation of the first mobile device application.

4. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the computer readable program, when executed on the system, causes the system to establish the application virtual machine representation by receiving, at the one or more central servers, one or more first modules that were changed during operation of the first mobile device application installed on the mobile device since a previous update was performed.

5. The computer program product of claim 4, wherein the computer readable program, when executed on the system, causes the system to establish the application virtual machine representation by constructing an isolated sandbox for running the application virtual machine representation of the first mobile device application by combining one or more second modules from an application store with the one or more first modules to form the application virtual machine representation of the first mobile device application.

6. The computer program product of claim 1, where the one or more central servers comprise a cloud-based application center.

7. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the computer readable program, when executed on the system, causes the system to send one or more modules by downloading one or more modules that were changed when updating the application virtual machine representation for integration into the first mobile device application installed on the mobile device to change a version of the first mobile device application without performing a direct update of the entire first mobile device application on the mobile device.

8. The computer program product of claim 1, where the application virtual machine representation of the first mobile device application comprises one or more software modules and separate data modules which may be accessed through a set of APIs for data access.

9. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the computer readable program, when executed on the system, causes the system to update the application virtual machine representation by receiving user configuration input through a browser based configuration input at a computing device connected to the one or more central servers.

10. An information handling system comprising:

one or more processors;

a memory coupled to at least one of the processors;

a set of instructions stored in the memory and executed by at least one of the processors to update mobile device applications at one or more central servers comprising a cloud-based application center, wherein the set of instructions are executable to perform actions of;

suspending a virtual machine implementation of a first mobile device application installed on a mobile device;

then

establishing, at the one or more central servers, an application virtual machine representation of the first mobile device application installed on the mobile device by constructing an isolated sandbox for running the application virtual machine representation of the first mobile device application and receiving, at the one or more central servers, one or more first modules that were changed during operation of the first mobile device application installed on the mobile device since a previous update was performed;

updating the application virtual machine representation at the one or more central servers to perform software configuration, installation, upgrade, optimization, testing, or maintenance tasks on the application virtual machine representation without using computational resources at the mobile device; and

sending, to the mobile device that, one or more modules that were changed when updating the application virtual machine representation for integration into the first mobile device application installed on the mobile device.

11. The information handling system of claim 10, where updating the application virtual machine representation comprises receiving user configuration input through a browser based configuration input at a computing device connected to the one or more central servers.

12. The information handling system of claim 10, where sending one or more modules comprises downloading one or more modules that were changed when updating the application virtual machine representation for integration into the first mobile device application installed on the mobile device to change a version of the first mobile device application without performing a direct update of the entire first mobile device application on the mobile device.