SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR METRIC-BASED CLOUD MANAGEMENT

• US 20130304904A1
• Filed: 03/15/2013
• Published: 11/14/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 05/09/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Everbridge Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Everbridge Incorporated
• Inventors: Mouline, Imad, Breen, William Ryan
• Granted Patent: US 9,391,855 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0201 Market modelling; Market analysis; Collecting market data
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0246 Traffic
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/01 Social networking
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5009 Determining service level performance parameters or violations of service level contracts, e.g. violations of agreed response time or mean time between failures [MTBF]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5096 wherein the managed service relates to distributed or central networked applications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/045 for graphical visualisation of monitoring data
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/54 Organization of routing tables
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/611 for multicast or broadcast systems for broadcast or conference H04L12/18; arrangements for broadcast or distribution combined with broadcast H04H20/00; arrangements for broadcast applications with a direct linkage to broadcast information or to broadcast space-time H04H60/00; selective distribution of broadcast services, e.g. multimedia broadcast multicast service [MBMS], H04W4/06
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/535 Tracking the activity of the user network monitoring arrangements H04L43/00; recording of computer activity G06F11/34
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2203/2016 Call initiation by network rather than by subscriber
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2242/04 for emergency applications
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/323 for the arrangements providing the connection (test connection, test call, call simulation)

Abstract

Systems and methods for a cloud management system which utilizes both technical and business metrics to achieve operational efficiencies. The systems and methods can be used to provide an elastic infrastructure model for an emergency notifications system which delivers near infinite scale with guaranteed near 100% uptime. In an embodiment, a mass recipient emulator can be utilized for testing of the notifications system with actual phone call or message exchange.

Claims

1. A method for managing a cloud computing system comprising:

collecting decisional inputs from one or more sources, said decisional inputs comprising technical metrics and business metrics;

displaying said technical and business metrics in a unified dashboard on a display screen; and

managing one or more processor-based systems of said cloud computing system based on said displayed technical and business metrics.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said business metrics are selected from the group consisting of cloud cost, revenue generation, impressions served, conversion rates, cost per visitor, number of unique visitors, time on site, and customer experience.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more sources comprise cloud providers, web performance monitoring services and web analytics services.

4. The method according to claim 1, wherein said decisional inputs comprise one or more of operational metrics, marketing metrics, cloud cost and usage, and custom data feeds.

5. The method according to claim 1, further comprising displaying visibility metrics derived from the business and technical metrics.

6. The method according to claim 5, wherein said visibility metrics are selected from the group consisting of cloud cost per lead, cloud cost per conversion, advertisement impression to cloud cost, page views to cloud performance, cloud availability to total sales, cloud availability to cloud cost, cloud bandwidth to cost per visitor, cloud bandwidth to CPU usage, cloud performance to cost per conversion, cloud performance to unique visitors, advertisement impressions to bandwidth, and visits to cloud cost.

7. The method according to claim 1, further comprising providing traffic shaping based on said decisional inputs.

8. The method according to claim 7, wherein said traffic shaping is DNS-based traffic shaping.

9. The method according to claim 8, wherein said DNS-based traffic shaping utilizes a hybrid Anycast/Unicast system.

10. The method according to claim 1, said step of managing one or more processor-based systems of said cloud computing system comprises setting business metric targets and sending alerts if any cloud resources are nearing the business metric targets.

11. The method according to claim 10, wherein said business metric target comprises cloud cost.

12. The method according to claim 1, wherein said step of managing one or more processor-based systems of said cloud computing system comprises finding a lowest cloud cost that will not negatively impact online conversions.

13. The method according to claim 1, said step of managing one or more processor-based systems of said cloud computing system comprises balancing cloud performance and cost to maximize page views and revenues.

14. The method according to claim 1, wherein said step of managing one or more processor-based systems of said cloud computing system comprises minimizing cost given a set of performance requirements.

15. The method according to claim 14, wherein said step of minimizing cost comprises turning off cloud instances.

16. A method for managing a cloud computing system comprising:

collecting decisional inputs from one or more sources, said decisional inputs comprising technical metrics and business metrics;

analyzing in a processor-based system said decisional inputs to determine an optimal outcome; and

managing one or more processor-based systems of said cloud computing system based on said analysis.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein said step of analyzing comprises monitoring historical traffic patterns and said step of managing comprises allocating cloud resources of the cloud computing system in accordance with the analysis.

18. The method of claim 16, wherein said decisional inputs include conversion rates versus performance, and said step of managing comprises allocating cloud resources in accordance with an analysis of conversion rates versus performance.

19. The method of claim 16, wherein said step of analyzing said decisional inputs comprises analyzing cloud cost per lead, cloud cost per conversion, advertisement impression to cloud cost, page views to cloud performance, cloud availability to total sales, cloud availability to cloud cost, cloud bandwidth to cost per visitor, cloud bandwidth to CPU usage, cloud performance to cost per conversion, cloud performance to unique visitors, advertisement impressions to bandwidth, or visits to cloud cost.

20. A cloud management system comprising:

a load controller comprising a cloud poller module configured to receive information concerning cloud instances provided by cloud service providers and a performance receiver module configured to receive performance data from a Domain Name System (DNS) management system,

a portal configured to display a dashboard of unified technical and business metrics including metrics derived from information obtained by the load controller and performance receiver modules; and

a database configured to store data acquired by the performance receiver module.

21. The cloud management system of claim 20, wherein the portal displays a cloud infrastructure hierarchy display for displaying cloud instance profiles across a plurality of zones and provider, said profiles including technical and business metrics associated with each cloud instance.

22. The system of claim 21, wherein the portal displays control objects for managing cloud instances based on the displayed cloud instance profiles.

23. A system for simulating phone calls to recipients by a notification system comprising:

a receiver configured to receive inbound phone calls; and

a mass recipient emulator coupled to the receiver and configured to simulate end user behavior, said behavior selected from the group comprising not answering the phone, hanging up after hearing or during a greeting, listening to a few seconds of a message and then hanging up, and listening to a message multiple times.

24. The mass recipient emulator of claim 23, wherein said simulated end user behavior is specified by an operator.

25. The mass recipient emulator of claim 23, wherein said simulated end user behavior is derived from historical usage collected by the notification system.

26. The mass recipient emulator of claim 24, wherein the emulator is configured to derive optimal notification characteristics from historical usage data collected by the notification system.

27. A method of testing a notification system comprising:

receiving a notification sent through a network;

linking the notification to a mass recipient emulator module;

querying the mass recipient emulator module to determine a behavior, and utilizing the behavior to respond to the notification.

28. The method of claim 27, wherein the notification comprises a phone call sent through a public switched telephone network.

29. A method of providing notification from a notification system on a screen of a mobile device, comprising:

displaying a geographical map of a defined universe, said map displaying notifications and rich-content responses and submissions from recipients on the screen of the mobile device;

receiving a user'"'"'s location from the mobile device;

receiving a report of a user'"'"'s situation at the user'"'"'s location; and

sending said report to the notifications system.

30. The method of claim 29, further comprising notifying an operator of the notification system when critical response and submission thresholds have been reached.

31. The method of claim 29, wherein said report comprises a response from a list of possible situations.

32. The method of claim 29, wherein said report comprises a digital image.

33. The method of claim 29, wherein said map comprises icons to indicate the location of reports received by the notification system from a plurality of users.

34. The method of claim 33, wherein said icons are color-coded to indicate the situation at a location represented by an icon.

35. The method of claim 33, further comprising receiving a selection of an individual icon and displaying more details about a situation at a location represented by the selected icon.

36. The method of claim 29, further comprising displaying an overlay comprising data feeds.

37. The method of claim 36, wherein said data feed comprising a hurricane forecasting feed.

38. A method of providing notification in a notification system, comprising displaying a map of an affected area;

receiving social media data and analyzing said social media data;

alerting an operator when an alert threshold has been met by the social media data; and

displaying said social media feeds on the display map of the affected area.

39. The method of claim 38, wherein said social media data comprises a real-time feed of tweets.

40. The method of claim 38, further comprising displaying responses received from recipients of notifications sent by the notifications system.