APPARATUS, SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR DEPLOYMENT OF INTERACTIVE DESKTOP APPLICATIONS ON DISTRIBUTED INFRASTRUCTURES

• US 20130151598A1
• Filed: 02/05/2013
• Published: 06/13/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 02/09/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: CliQr Technologies, Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Inventors: FU, TIANYING, MANGLIK, GAURAV
• Granted Patent: US 10,003,672 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/203
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/452 Remote windowing, e.g. X-Window System, desktop virtualisation protocols for virtual reality H04L67/131
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45533 Hypervisors; Virtual machine monitors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/54 Interprogram communication
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/01 Protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/025 for remote control or remote monitoring of applications
• 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

Embodiments disclosed facilitate adaptation of interactive desktop applications (IDAs) for deployment and execution on distributed systems including clouds. In some embodiments, the method comprises: executing a cloud-based IDA on a dedicated elastic Virtual Machine (VM) running on at least one of a plurality of cloud infrastructures using a remote client device; and invoking an application on the remote client device comprising a remote desktop protocol (RDP) to connect to the VM on the at least one cloud infrastructure to facilitate remote user interaction with the at least one cloud-based IDA using functionality provided by the RDP. In some embodiments, the remote client application may be a web browser and RDP may be implemented using browser plugins. Further, the remote client application may sync data with cloud infrastructure before and after IDA execution, and the VM running the IDA may be terminated when user exits the IDA.

Claims

1. A processor-implemented method comprising:

executing at least one cloud-based interactive desktop application (IDA) on a Virtual Machine (VM) running on at least one of a plurality of cloud infrastructures; and

invoking an application on a remote client device to connect to the VM on the at least one cloud infrastructure to facilitate remote user interaction with the at least one cloud-based IDA, wherein the application on the remote client device comprises a remote desktop protocol suite, which facilitates remote user interaction with cloud-based IDA.

2. The processor-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the remote user interaction comprises:

displaying a Graphical User-Interface (GUI) associated with the cloud-based IDA on the remote client device; and

sending user input associated with the cloud-based IDA from the remote client device to the cloud-based IDA.

3. The processor-implemented method of claim 2, wherein the remote user interaction occurs through a web browser.

4. The processor-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the application on the remote client device is a web browser and the remote desktop protocol suite is provided by a browser plugin.

5. The processor-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the remote desktop protocol suite comprises at least one of:

a presentation layer protocol,

a framebuffer protocol,

a terminal services protocol, or

a proprietary desktop sharing protocol.

6. The processor-implemented method of claim 1, wherein executing the at least one cloud-based interactive desktop application (IDA) on the VM comprises synchronizing data files between the remote client and the cloud-based IDA.

8. The processor-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the remote client device is at least one of:

a tablet computer,

a handheld computer;

a smartphone,

a netbook, or

a laptop.

9. The processor-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the VM is dedicated to run the IDA and dynamically brought up immediately prior to executing the cloud-based IDA and dynamically torn down immediately following termination of the cloud-based IDA.

10. The processor-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the cloud-based IDA for the at least one cloud infrastructure is derived from an infrastructure independent representation of the IDA by utilizing at least one cloud-specific implementation of the infrastructure independent representation of the IDA, and wherein the at least one cloud-specific implementation of the IDA corresponds to the at least one cloud infrastructure.

7. The processor-implemented method of claim 7, wherein the data files comprise input data files and output data files and synchronizing data files between the remote client and the cloud-based IDA further comprises:

copying input data files from the remote client device to cloud-based storage used by the cloud-based IDA as part of an initialization routine associated with the cloud-based IDA, wherein the input data files are used by the cloud-based IDA during execution; and

copying output data files from the cloud-based storage used by the cloud-based IDA to the remote client device as part of a termination routine associated with the cloud-based IDA, wherein the output data files are output by the cloud-based IDA.

11. An apparatus comprising:

a processor configured to run a software agent; and

a communications interface coupled to the processor, the communications interface capable of remote communication with a Virtual Machine (VM) running on at least one of a plurality of cloud infrastructures;

wherein the processor invokes the software agent to connect to the VM on the at least one cloud infrastructure using functionality provided by the communications interface, and

wherein the software agent comprises a remote desktop protocol suite to facilitate remote user interaction with at least one cloud-based Interactive Desktop Application (IDA) running on the VM.

12. The apparatus of claim 11, wherein the apparatus further comprises a display and the remote user interaction utilizes functionality provided by the remote desktop protocol suite to:

display a Graphical User-Interface (GUI) associated with the cloud-based IDA on the display; and

send user input associated with the cloud-based IDA GUI from the apparatus to the cloud-based IDA.

13. The apparatus of claim 11, wherein apparatus is at least one of:

a tablet computer,

a handheld computer;

a smartphone,

a netbook, or

a laptop.

14. The apparatus of claim 11, wherein the apparatus further comprises storage for data files and software agent communicates with the at least one cloud-based IDA to synchronize data files stored on the apparatus and the cloud-based IDA.

15. The apparatus of claim 14, wherein the data files comprise input data files and output data files and synchronizing data files further comprises:

copying input data files stored on the apparatus to cloud-based storage used by the cloud-based IDA as part of an initialization routine associated with the cloud-based IDA, wherein the input data files are used by the cloud-based IDA during execution; and

copying output data files from the cloud-based storage used by the cloud-based IDA to storage on the apparatus as part of a termination routine associated with the cloud-based IDA, wherein the output data files are output by the cloud-based IDA.

16. The apparatus of claim 11, wherein the remote desktop protocol comprises at least one of:

a presentation layer protocol,

a framebuffer protocol,

a terminal services protocol, or

a proprietary desktop sharing protocol.

17. A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising instructions, which when executed by the processor perform steps in a method comprising:

executing at least one cloud-based interactive desktop application (IDA) on a Virtual Machine running on at least one of a plurality of cloud infrastructures using a remote client device; and

invoking an application on the remote client device to connect to the VM on the at least one cloud infrastructure to facilitate remote user interaction with the at least one cloud-based IDA, wherein the application on the remote client device comprises a remote desktop protocol suite, which facilitates user interaction with the at least one cloud-based IDA.

18. The computer-readable medium of claim 17, wherein the remote user interaction comprises:

displaying a Graphical User-Interface (GUI) associated with the cloud-based IDA on the remote client device; and

sending user input associated with the cloud-based IDA from the remote client device to the cloud-based IDA.

19. The computer-readable medium of claim 17, wherein the application on the remote client device is a web browser and the remote desktop protocol functionality is provided by a browser plugin.

20. The computer-readable medium of claim 17, wherein the remote desktop protocol comprises at least one of:

a presentation layer protocol,

a framebuffer protocol,

a terminal services protocol, or

a proprietary desktop sharing protocol.