FULFILLING A REQUEST BASED ON CATALOG AGGREGATION AND ORCHESTRATED EXECUTION OF AN END-TO-END PROCESS

• US 20150161681A1
• Filed: 12/08/2014
• Published: 06/11/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 12/09/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Micro Focus LLC (Open Text Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Maes, Stephane Herman, Rossen, Lars, Kim, Woong Joseph, Vana, Jan, Desai, Ankit Ashok, Johnson, Christopher William, Kuchler, Keith, Yang, Michael, Ritthaler, Roy
• Granted Patent: US 11,126,481 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/541 via adapters, e.g. between incompatible applications
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/542 Event management; Broadcasting; Multicasting; Notifications
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/546 Message passing systems or structures, e.g. queues
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0276 Advertisement creation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/046 Interoperability with other network applications or services

Abstract

Catalogs that describe respective offerings for fulfillment by respective applications, are aggregated to form an aggregate catalog. A request relating to at least one of the offerings is received based on content presented from the aggregate catalog. In response to the request, an orchestrated execution of an end-to-end process is performed to fulfill the request relating to the at least one offering, the executing of the end-to-end process comprising calling at least one of the applications.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

aggregating, by a system including a processor, catalogs that describe respective offerings for fulfillment by respective applications, to form an aggregate catalog;

receiving, by the system, a request relating to at least one of the offerings based on content presented from the aggregate catalog; and

in response to the request, perform an orchestrated execution, by the system, of an end-to-end process to fulfill the request relating to the at least one offering, the executing of the end-to-end process comprising calling at least one of the applications.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein performing the orchestrated execution of the end-to-end process is performed by the service exchange and comprises:

calling, by an orchestrator in the service exchange, the at least one application;

reacting, by the orchestrator to an event from the at least one application or from another source; and

communicating information between the orchestrator and the at least one application using a message broker of the service exchange.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the system is provided by an enterprise, and wherein aggregating the catalogs comprises aggregating the catalogs that comprise a catalog of a third party vendor of the enterprise.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

performing, by the system, the end-to-end process using the applications that are un-modified for the aggregate catalog.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

providing, by the system, widgets comprising at least one from among a widget to search information of a knowledge base, a widget to create a new offering or a new term of an existing offering, a widget to perform an approval for a request of an offering, a lifecycle management widget, a support ticket management widget, a widget to select or fill information, and a widget to determine access visibility.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising implementing the widgets as microservices.

7. The method of claim 5, further comprising:

using tools to author the microservices for the service broker according to an agile and reusable model, the service broker performing the aggregating and the receiving; and

providing a platform including the microservices.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

managing, by the system, approval associated with performing the end-to-end process.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising at least one of:

bundling, using an administration portal, offerings of the catalogs; and

creating, using the administration portal, a new offering based on the offerings of the catalogs.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining, by the system, entities with permission to view selected offerings of the aggregate catalog.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising performing at least one of:

performing lifecycle management for an order of the request relating to the at least one offering; and

performing support ticket management for an order of the request relating to the at least one offering.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the aggregating is performed by an aggregator, and the receiving is performed by a portal, and wherein the aggregator and portal are part of a service broker, the service broker comprising a service broker deployed at a customer site, deployed in a cloud, deployed using Software as a Service (SaaS) services, or deployed at a site of an enterprise, or deployed in a cloud and at a site of an enterprise.

13. A system comprising:

an aggregator to aggregate individual catalogs that describe respective offerings for fulfillment by applications, to form an aggregate catalog;

a portal to present a user interface containing information of offerings based on the aggregate catalog; and

a service exchange to trigger a workflow responsive to a selection of at least one of the offerings in the user interface, the service exchange to delegate tasks to applications as part of an orchestrated execution of the workflow, the applications comprising applications associated with the individual catalogs.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the catalogs comprise catalogs of multiple vendors.

15. The system of claim 13, further comprising a widget to evaluate approval for the workflow, wherein the evaluating of the approval comprises the widget performing an approval procedure, or the widget delegating the evaluating of the approval to at least one of the applications or another entity.

16. The system of claim 13, further comprising a widget to create a new offering for the aggregate catalog.

17. The system of claim 13, further comprising a widget to create a new commercial term associated with at least one of the offerings.

18. The system of claim 13, wherein the offerings comprise information technology (IT) offerings, and the system comprises an IT service broker, the IT service broker comprising the aggregator and the portal.

19. An article comprising at least one non-transitory machine-readable storage medium storing instructions that upon execution cause a system to:

aggregate catalogs that describe respective offerings for fulfillment by respective applications, to form an aggregate catalog;

synchronize content of the catalogs and the aggregate catalog in response to an update of any of the catalogs and the aggregate catalog;

receive a request relating to at least one of the offerings based on content presented from the aggregate catalog; and

in response to the request, perform an orchestrated execution of an end-to-end process to fulfill the request relating to the at least one offering, the executing of the end-to-end process comprising calling at least one of the applications.

20. The article of claim 19, wherein the instructions upon execution cause the system to further:

in response to the request or interactions to fulfill the request, invoke widgets comprising at least one from among a widget to search information of a knowledge base, a widget to create a new offering or a new term of an existing offering, a widget to perform an approval for a request of an offering, a lifecycle management widget, a support ticket management widget, a widget to select or fill information, and a widget to determine access visibility.

21. The article of claim 19, wherein the instructions upon execution cause the system to further:

in response to the request, call a trigger in the aggregate catalog; and

pass the call to a service exchange to trigger execution of the end-to-end process.