AUTOMATED APPLICATION DISCOVERY AND ANALYSIS SYSTEM AND METHOD

• US 20140136251A1
• Filed: 01/22/2014
• Published: 05/15/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 03/12/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Global SAAS Solutions Pte Limited
• Original Assignee: ION Management Solutions Incorporated
• Inventors: Bird, Stephen Anthony
• Granted Patent: US 9,361,598 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/7.11
• 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 application modeling system for automating the discovery, mapping and monitoring of a plurality of elements within an IT Infrastructure that supports specific applications and business services, spanning not only network elements, hosts, and software, but also users, company structures and business processes they support. The system includes: collector modules for collecting relationship, modeling and status information from both IT and non-IT specific sources, creating data objects representing application components in the modeling database and gathering pertinent data about activities occurring in the end-to-end IT infrastructure; a modeling database for consolidating information gathered by the collector modules; correlator modules for automating determination of complex relationships between data objects stored in the modeling database to create application models of individual applications in the context of business process and IT service delivery; visualizer modules for viewing application structures end-to-end and predicting the impacts of element failures on the delivery of business services.

Claims

1. A method for automating the discovery and modelling of application and business services in an Information Technology (IT) system without the manual programming of rules or event correlation, comprising:

a. collecting and modelling IT elements such as servers, workstations, installed software applications and any network elements, for example routers, switches and firewalls;

b. collecting and modelling non-IT elements such as end users, office locations, business services, financial and human resource data;

c. automatically determine a plurality of relationships between the collected and modelled elements;

d. tracking and updating the model for changes in the modelled elements;

e. determining an impact of a failure of given elements on the business and users; and

f. determining a potential financial impact in businesses from the failure of an element.

2. A method, as set forth in claim 1, wherein the step of collecting is performed by a piece of generic collector software that can be configured to collect data from any accessible IT or non-IT related source.

3. A method, as set forth in claim 2, where the common data format is flexible and not limited to a specific structure or format.

4. A method, as set forth in claim 1, where the common data model is used to combine data collected from a plurality of sources into a common model for the purpose of automatically discovering and modeling an application services and/or business services end-to-end.

5. A method, as set forth in claim 4, where end-to-end modeling includes the elements that support an application service directly and all elements between that service and users using that service, including their workstation, role and position in the business.

6. A method, as set forth in claim 1, wherein the structure of an application consists of:

a. IT elements such as servers, workstations, installed software applications and any network elements, for example routers, switches and firewalls;

b. non-IT elements such as end users, office locations, business services, financial and human resource data; and

c. relationships between the elements of which the application service comprises.

7. A method, as set forth in claim 1, where an application will consist of at least one unique structure being one of virtual, logical or physical.

8. A method in claim 1 where collection and modelling of elements includes:

a. collecting descriptive and relationship data on the IT and non-IT elements from a plurality non-specific sources;

b. automatically converting the collected data into a common data format;

c. automatically combining the converted collected data into objects of a common model, the common model including the IT elements and non-IT elements used by each application; and

,

d. automatically identifying at least one unique application structure as a function of the common model and a set of non-specific predefined policies, including the structure of the business application including the IT systems, IT elements, non-IT elements, users, business objects and non-technological services used by the application.

9. A method, as set forth in claim 2, where the common data format is flexible and not limited to a specific structure or format.

10. A method, as set forth in claim 8, where collected element data from a plurality of sources is combined in the model by correlators to build IT elements that represent real-world infrastructure.

11. A method, as set forth in claim 1, where new relationships are determined within the model based on non-specific policies executed by correlators, where the type of relationship can be any type of relationship as defined in the policy.

12. A method, as set forth in claim 2, wherein IT and non-IT element data can be collected from a plurality of sources, including from third party applications and direct data collection from modelled systems using collectors.

13. A method, as set forth in claim 1, wherein a structure of an application service or business service is created in the model as a function of a set of non-specific predefined policies.

14. A method, as set forth in claim 1, where the collected data can consist of any descriptive attribute for an IT element, including but not limited to model, ports, interfaces, IP address, location, owner, memory, software version, model, cards, and descriptive data.

15. A method, as set forth in claim 1, where non-IT data can consist of but is not limited to persons, users data, financial information, transaction volume, sales volume, company organization data.

16. A method, as set forth in claim 1, where the element object data in the common data format is combined in an object model to represent specific application service and business services structures using non-specific policies to identify the elements from which the service is comprised.

17. A method, as set forth in claim 1, wherein the identifying at least one unique application structure as a function of a set of predefined policies is performed by correlator software modules.

18. A method, as set forth in claim 1, the plurality of collected relationships include, but are not limited to, connected via, composed of, virtualized on, owned by, supports application, and neighbor of.

19. A method, as set forth in claim 2, wherein the collector software identifies an amount of end user application usage.

20. A method, as set forth in claim 2, wherein the collector software includes a virtualization network discovery collector for mapping all IT elements in that environment.

21. A method, as set forth in claim 2, wherein the collector software includes a software inventory collector for identifying applications loaded on IT elements either directly or from a third-party source.

22. A method, as set forth in claim 2, wherein the objects collected into the model can represent any type of IT infrastructure, physical or virtual.

23. A method, as set forth in claim 2, wherein the collected data may be from multiple sources and may represent both business, organizational structure and operational models.

24. A method, as set forth in claim 1, where real-time monitoring can include business KPI'"'"'s, i.e., the number of boxes shipped, calls received, units sold, telemarketing revenue.

25. A method, as set forth in claim 1 impacts the business can compare service availability to business performance.

26. A method in claim 1 where business impact includes:

a. determining a specific elements impact on service delivery;

b. determining the impact on individual or group of staff using a specific application; and

c. determining the financial impact of a failure of an element or elements on the business.

27. A method, as set forth in claim 1, where the plurality of relationships between IT and non-IT elements is determined using correlators, processing non-specific policies against the objects in the model to determine relationships between elements and model application and business service structures.

28. A method, as set forth in claim 1, where the mapping of business processes model the role of applications in supporting the business, where the application models are mapped against the production process flow of users or business units.

29. A method, as set forth in claim 27, wherein the predefined policies are non-specific descriptions of the type of element, element attribute(s) or element inter-relationships that describe and applications structure.

30. A method, as set forth in claim 27, where the Application structures created by the policies do not require rules or manual identification of specific IT elements to create.

31. A method, as set forth in claim 1, where multiple relationships between elements embody application interdependencies representing complex applications and processes.

32. A method, as set forth in claim 1, where financial impact of a modelled application service or element failure on a business entity can be determined based on the relationships between the discovered application(s) model and the associated business entity.

33. A method, as set forth in claim 1, where the impact of a modelled application service or element failure on specific users or groups of users can be determined based on the relationships between the modeled users in the application model and/or the associated business entity.

34. A method, as set forth in claim 1, where relationships between software applications, the IT infrastructure supporting them and the business service and entities that they supported can be visualized via a graphical interface.

35. A method, as set forth in claim 1, where the potential impact of a failure on the modeled applications services and business services can be determined via a what-if scenario.

36. A method, as set forth in claim 1, where a GUI interface can be used to visualize the application and business services, relationship between them, and the impact of failures both real and simulated on applications and business services, in terms of user impact, business impact and financial/business KPI impact.