Method and apparatus for technology resource management

• US 7,660,731 B2
• Filed: 08/28/2006
• Issued: 02/09/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 04/06/2002
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Rai, Kamini, Whittle, John, Masrani, Sandeep, Gallie, William Stuart, Martinez, Tino, Chin, Arthur L., O'Crowley, Oisin Joseph, Chaddha, Parmeet S., Milatovich, Mark
• Primary Examiner(s): MEINECKE DIAZ, SUSANNA M
• Application Number:
  US11/511,613
• Publication Number:
  US 20060293942A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,261 Days
• Field of Search: 705/8, 705/7
• US Class Current: 705/7.12
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0631 Resource planning, allocation, distributing or scheduling for enterprises or organisations
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0639 Performance analysis of employees; Performance analysis of enterprise or organisation operations

Abstract

Apparatus and methods to manage demand, service level agreements, hardware and software assets, projects, labor, knowledge and provisioning resources in hosted applications. An asset manager coupled to host servers and a network, manages the host servers and software to determine the demand for new assets and allocate available assets to meet the demand; determine assets not in compliance with existing software licenses; determine and compare actual service level metrics with the target service level metrics; and determine availability of a patch or upgrade for selected software and instances of the selected software among the assets. The asset manager may be coupled to other managers, e.g., contract, product, work and/or accounting managers, to monitor service level metrics and/or costs.

Claims

1. An enterprise information handling system, comprising:

a plurality of hardware and software assets hosted on one or more servers connected to a network;

a plurality of client-side network access devices connected on the network to the one or more servers to use the hardware and software assets;

a resource center connected on the network to the one or more servers, the plurality of hardware and software assets, and the plurality of client-side network access devices, the resource center controlling the plurality of client-side network access devices'"'"' use of the hardware and software assets according to one or more agreements, the resource center comprising;

a processing device connected to at least one memory;

a database stored in at least one memory, the database comprising data of the plurality of client-side network access devices, the hardware assets, the software assets, the agreements, metrics of the actual use, a demand of the one or more of the plurality of client-side network access devices to use the hardware and software assets; and

an application center operationally connected to the processing device, the memory, and the database, the application center having a plurality of management modules executable in the processing device of the resource center that read from and write to the database and control data transfer, user administration, accounts, assets, agreements, products, tasks of the use of the hardware and software assets by the one or more of the plurality of client-side network access devices; and

wherein the resource center further monitors actual use of the hardware and software assets by one or more of the plurality of client-side network access devices and determines if the actual use is in violation of one or more agreements, and automatically generates billing adjustments based on violation of one or more agreement; and

an agreement management module of the application center and executable in the processing device determines if any of the agreements have expired or will expire in a sweep date range.

2. The information handling enterprise system of claim 1, wherein the one or more agreements is a service level agreement.

3. The information handling enterprise system of claim 1, wherein the agreement management module determines if any of the agreements are out of compliance.

4. The information handling enterprise system of claim 1, wherein a provisioning recommendation module of the application center executable in the processing device determines that a patch, an upgrade or a replacement of an asset is recommended to bring a non-compliant asset into compliance with an agreement.

5. A technology resource manager for managing technology resources including host servers, selected ones of which provide at least one application accessible to a plurality of client-side network access devices across a network;

the technology resource manager comprising;

at least one computer processing device for executing and at least one computer memory for storing at least a plurality of executable modules, the computer processing device and at least one computer memory connected to the network;

a database stored in at least one computer memory, the database comprising data of the plurality of client-side network access devices, the hardware assets, the software assets, the agreements, metrics of the actual use, a demand of the one or more of the plurality of client-side network access devices to use the hardware and software assets; and

an application center operationally connected to the computer processing device, at least one computer memory and the database, the application center having a plurality of management modules executable in the computer processing device of the technology resource manager that read from and write to the database and control data transfer, user administration, accounts, assets, agreements, products, tasks of the use of the hardware and software assets by the one or more of the plurality of client-side network access devices; and

a contract manager module within the application center and executable in the computer processing device for managing contracts for each client-side network access device with each contract expressed in terms of contract parameters including at least service level metrics and determining if any of the agreements have expired or will expire in a sweep date range; and

an asset manager module within the application center and executable in the computer processing device and coupled to the contract manager module and configured to couple to the host servers and to the network, the asset manager module controlling assets including the host servers and software deployed thereon by monitoring actual service level metrics of the assets and by determining the assets for which actual monitored service level metrics violate contract service level metrics,

wherein the technology resource manager automatically generates billing adjustments based on violation of the contract service level metrics.

6. The technology resource manager for managing technology resources of claim 5, wherein the asset manager module further monitors service level metrics over a portion of a billing interval and projects service level metrics for an entire billing interval to determine the assets for which projected service level metrics may violate contract service level metrics.