METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR VIRTUALLY DELIVERING SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS TO REMOTE CLIENTS

• US 20110106881A1
• Filed: 04/17/2009
• Published: 05/05/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 04/17/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cadens Medical Imaging, Inc. (Imagia Cybernetics Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Cadens Medical Imaging, Inc. (Imagia Cybernetics Inc.)
• Inventors: Douville, Hugo, Chandelier, Florent
• Granted Patent: US 9,866,445 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/203
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/61 Installation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/22 comprising specially adapted graphical user interfaces [GUI]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/4015 where at least one of the additional parallel sessions is real time or time sensitive, e.g. white board sharing, collaboration or spawning of a subconference
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/131 Protocols for games, networked simulations or virtual reality

Abstract

There is provided a method and system for delivering applications from a server system to at least one distant client devices through a computer network. The applications being physically processed at the server system but virtually delivered to the at least one client device. This allows the client device to benefit from every application of every OS as well as any processing power located at the server system such as specific hardware components and multi-computer processing units. Such method and system includes a process that encapsulates the server system software application and application environment in a Hypermedia Stream (HMS), the latter HMS providing seamless interactivity on the encapsulated and delivered software application.

Claims

1. A system for virtually delivering software applications, comprising:

a telecommunications network;

at least one system server;

at least one client device communicatively coupled to the at least one system server through the telecommunications network, the at least one client device enabling a user to request a software application from the system server; and

at least one application server associated with the at least one system server, the at least one application server being so configured as to execute the requested software application;

wherein the system server is so configured as to generate a hypermedia stream encapsulating at least a graphical user interface of the software application executed by the application server and delivering the hypermedia stream to the at least one client device; and

wherein the at least one client device is so configured so as to display the hypermedia stream content and allow the user to transmit interaction information to the at least one application server so as to be provided to the executed software application.

2. A system according to claim 1, wherein the hypermedia stream includes a stream selected from a group consisting of a video stream, an audio stream, static images data, data packets corresponding to interaction information, a peripheral bridge and a combination thereof.

3. A system according to claim 1. wherein the hypermedia stream is generated by a hypermedia stream encoder/decoder.

4. A system according to claim 3, wherein the hypermedia stream encoder/decoder Includes:

a hypermedia stream generator for generating the hypermedia stream and a hypermedia stream interaction manager associated with the at least one system server; and

a hypermedia stream interaction manager associated with the at least one client device.

5. A system according to claim 4, wherein the hypermedia stream generator includes at least one video encoder adapted for dynamically compressing video information and wherein the at least one client device includes at least one corresponding video decoder.

6. A system according to claim 5, wherein the video encoder is adapted for dynamically compressing video information according to currently available capacity of the telecommunications network.

7. A system according to claim 5, wherein the video encoder is adapted for dynamically compressing video information according to currently available capacity of the at least one client device.

8. A system according to claim 5, wherein the at least one video encoder is selected from the group consisting of MPEG 1, MPEG 2, MPEG 4 and H.264.

9. A system according to claim 4, wherein the at least one application server includes a compositing window manager which stores a in a memory buffer a graphical user interface content of the executed software application and wherein the hypermedia stream generator accesses the memory buffer in order to create the hypermedia stream.

10. A system according to claim 9, wherein the memory buffer resides in a memory location selected from a RAM of the at least one application server, a graphic hardware memory of the at least one application server, a RAM of the at least one system server, a graphic hardware memory of the at least one system server and a combination thereof.

11. A system according to claim 9, wherein the compositing window manager is software-based.

12. A system according to claim 9, wherein the compositing window manager is integrated into a graphics card.

13. A system according to claim 9, wherein the hypermedia stream generator includes a video encoder and wherein the video encoder encodes a NULL stream when the memory buffer has not changed.

14. A system according to claim 9, wherein the hypermedia stream interaction manager at the client device and the hypermedia stream interaction manager at the at least one application server cooperate to transmit interaction information from peripheral devices supported by the client device to the at least one application server so as to be provided to the executed software application.

15-25. -25. (canceled)

26. A method of virtually delivering a software application from an application server having a compositing window manager to at least one client device communicatively coupled to application server through a telecommunications network, comprising:

storing a graphical user interface content of the executed software application from the compositing window manager into a memory buffer;

accessing the memory buffer;

generating a hypermedia stream encapsulating at least the graphical user interface content of the memory buffer; and

delivering the hypermedia stream to the at least one client device.

27. A method according to claim 26, further comprising:

transmitting interaction information from the at least one client device to the application server; and

providing the interaction to the executed software application.

28. A method according to claim 27, further comprising delivering the hypermedia stream to at least two client devices.

29. A method according to claim 28, wherein the providing of interaction information to the executed software application is selectively locked for a time-exclusive interactive use by a given one of the at least two client devices.

30. A method according to claim 26, wherein the hypermedia stream includes a video stream and the step of generating the hypermedia stream includes dynamically compressing video information, the method further comprising decompressing the hypermedia stream delivered to the at least one client device.

31. A method according to claim 26, further comprising generating a hypermedia stream encapsulating at least one peripheral bridge allowing access to peripheral devices supported by the at least one client device for the software application that is executed on the at least one application server.