MONITORING APPLICATION INTERACTIONS WITH ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS

• US 20110270721A1
• Filed: 12/17/2010
• Published: 11/03/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 04/28/2010
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: SAP SE
• Original Assignee: SAP AG (SAP SE)
• Inventors: Kusterer, Stefan Wilhelm
• Application Number:
  US12/971,350
• Publication Number:
  US 20110270721A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/32
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/04 Billing or invoicing
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0641 Shopping interfaces
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/12 Accounting
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/125 Finance or payroll

Abstract

Networked services may interface with enterprise systems of an organization to access data in the enterprise systems. A networked service may be able to retrieve, manipulate, and store data in the enterprise systems. Once a networked service interfacing with enterprise systems has been created, developers may create apps or applications that call one or more networked services to access data in the enterprise systems. The apps may provide basic functionality, such as generating a user interface in a specific device using a specific industry standard platform for incorporating data from enterprise systems accessed by a linked service. Networked services may also contain modules for tracking calls or invocations of the service together with an identifier of an associated application and user, in addition to other data. This data may be recorded in a database and shared to compensate parties based on actual usage of the services and/or apps.

Claims

1. A usage tracking system comprising:

a processing device to execute a networked service, the networked service interfacing with data in an enterprise computing system through a representational state transfer paradigm;

a memory device to store a quantitative network service usage algorithm;

a communications device to send networked service invocation requests received from a communications network to the processing device to execute the networked service and interface with the data in the enterprise computing system identified in each invocation request; and

a calculating arrangement to track usage of the networked service and apply the quantitative usage algorithm to calculate a quantitative usage amount of the networked service.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the quantitative usage algorithm is configured to count invocations of the executed networked service to calculate the quantitative usage.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the quantitative usage algorithm is configured to aggregate time spent executing the networked service to calculate the quantitative usage.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the quantitative usage algorithm is configured to aggregate a quantity of data transmitted over the established channel to calculate the quantitative usage.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the networked service invocation request includes an identifier of an entity submitting the request and the calculating arrangement calculates the quantitative usage amount of each entity.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the calculating arrangement includes an assessed usage fee component used to calculate a usage fee for each entity as the quantitative usage amount of that entity.

7. The system of claim 6, further comprising an invoicing arrangement to generate invoices for entities, the invoices including the calculated usage fees.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the communications device sends the generated invoices to the entities for payment.

9. The system of claim 1, further comprising a security arrangement to control access for interfacing with the enterprise computing system data.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the security arrangement includes a firewall device to restrict external access to the enterprise computing system data and enable the networked service to establish the channel to interface with the enterprise computing system data.

11. The system of claim 9, wherein the service invocation requests are sent from apps executed on different systems and include a credential from the app sending the request for the credential check, each app instantiating a user interface for interrelating the interfaced data, and the security arrangement includes a credential check of the service invocation requests sent to the networked service.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the credential includes an identifier of the app and an identifier of a user of the app.

13. The system of claim 11, wherein the credential is secured through a cryptographic function.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the credential is provided through a third party certification program.

15. A usage tracking method comprising:

parsing through a processing device a plurality of invocation requests received from a communication network to identify a networked service, and enterprise computing system data associated with each invocation request, each networked service specifying a representational state transfer paradigm for interfacing with an enterprise computing system;

executing the identified networked service in each invocation request to access data in a respective enterprise computing system and transfer the identified enterprise computing system data using the specified representational state transfer paradigm;

applying a quantitative usage algorithm to calculate a quantitative usage of executed networked service over a period.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising assessing a usage fee to a user of the networked service based on the calculated quantitative usage.

17. The method of claim 15, further comprising:

calculating an entity'"'"'s aggregated quantitative usage of executed networked services during the period from the identifiers of entities submitting the invocation requests included in the invocation requests; and

assessing a usage fee to the entity based on the calculated aggregated usage.

18. The method of claim 15, further comprising requiring an external computing system to submit an invocation request to interface with the enterprise computing system data, the external computing system prevented from directly accessing the enterprise computing system and executing the identified networked service.

19. The method of claim 18, further comprising applying a cryptographic function to validate a code from the external computing system included in the invocation request to determine whether the invocation request is authorized.