Automated application discovery and analysis system and method

• US 20060123022A1
• Filed: 09/12/2005
• Published: 06/08/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 03/12/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Global SAAS Solutions Pte Limited
• Original Assignee: Intotality Pty Limited Australia
• Inventors: Bird, Stephen Anthony
• Granted Patent: US 7,657,545 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/287 Visualization; Browsing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/289 Object oriented databases
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/063 Operations research, analysis or management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0635 Risk analysis of enterprise or organisation activities
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06375 Prediction of business process outcome or impact based on a proposed change

Abstract

An object oriented design for an automated modeling system for mapping and monitoring the business roles and impact of elements within an IT Infrastructure that make up specific applications or business processes, spanning not only network elements, hosts, servers and programs but also users, company structure and processes. The design including: a series of collector modules for collecting relationship, modeling and status information from both IT and external non IT specific sources used to build a model of the application or process in the database and to gather data about activities occurring on the computer network from a business impact perspective; a series of visualizer modules for reporting monitoring activities conducted by the monitoring system; a modeling database for storing information collected by the collector modules; a series of correlator modules for automatically determining relationships between data objects stored in the database to build application models of individual applications in the context of business process and IT service delivery.

Claims

1. A computer system arrangement for discovering and creating database models of individual information technology (IT) applications, enabling determination of a business role and impact of IT Elements within a IT Infrastructure, the arrangement including:

a series of collector modules for collecting relationship, modeling and status information from both IT and external non IT specific sources, used to build models of the applications and processes in a modeling database, and to gather data about activities occurring in the IT Infrastructure from a business impact perspective;

a series of visualizer modules for reporting monitoring activities conducted by the monitoring system and providing a visual representation of the role of Applications and IT Infrastructure in supporting the business;

a modeling database for storing information collected by the collector modules;

a data structure that supports the integrated modeling of applications and their role in business structure, service delivery and processes;

a first series of correlator modules that build models of IT Elements from disparate sets of data to build representation of the IT Element in the real world infrastructure; and

a second series of correlator modules for automatically determining relationships between data objects stored in the database to build application models of individual applications in the context of business role, process and IT service delivery.

2. An arrangement as claimed in claim 1, wherein the output of said correlator is interconnected to said visualizer modules.

3. An arrangement as claimed in claim 1, wherein said system operates via a publish and subscribe data bus and said system further comprises a bus broker module for arbitrating access by the other modules.

4. An arrangement as claimed in claim 1, further comprising a second database for keeping statistical information about correlations between data in said modeling database.

5. An arrangement as claimed in claim 1 wherein said data structure is in an XML format.

6. A method operable on a computer system for automatically discovering and determining the role of individual elements that make up an Information Technology (IT) infrastructure in the delivery of application services, said method including the steps of:

(a) identifying which applications each IT element supports or is part of;

(b) determining the connectivity and relationship between IT elements in an application;

(c) creating and displaying maps of IT infrastructure from an individual application perspective;

(d) determining which end user systems utilize a given application and the users that use each system.

(e) providing a prediction capability of the impact of the failure or change of a modelled IT element in regards to impacted application;

(f) maintaining the model of each application without the need for manual interaction, to keep the model accurate based on adjusting the model as changes in the data collected.

7. A method as claimed in claim 6 further comprising calculating user, business and financial impact of an infrastructure failure or change, including the incorporation of business key performance indicators (KPIs).

8. A computerised system that discovers and determines the business relationships and impacts of IT applications;

based on the roles of the application, the users and their position in the business organisation.

9. A method for determining the quality of service delivery and cost of an IT failure, or change, based on the impacted users of each application;

this is determined through an understanding of the costs and revenue generation for each user, and from this, determining the financial impact of an IT element failure.