Business method and system for serving third party software applications
First Claim
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1. A method for serving applications to a target client computer for a subscribing institution, comprising:
- configuring a third party application hosting system to provide one or more applications on behalf of subscribing institutions to requesting clients, wherein the subscribing institutions include organizations that outsourced hosting of one or more applications to an organization that controls the third party application hosting system;
receiving, by the third party application hosting system via a public computer network, a signal indicating that a client computer selected a hyper-text application link for an application displayed by the subscribing institution;
determining that the subscribing institution is authorized to have applications provided by the third party application hosting system based on user account information in the signal indicating that the client computer selected the hyper-text application link;
sending, by the third party application hosting system, a helper application to the client computer, wherein the application resides on the third party application hosting system and the helper application is configured to control execution of the application on the client computer by downloading portions of the application for execution, periodically communicating with the third party application host system to determine whether to shutdown the application, and deleting the downloaded portions of the application when the application is shutdown; and
sending at least portions of the application in response to requests from the helper application.
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Abstract
A method and system for serving software applications to remote clients across the interne, for example, is disclosed that preferably utilizes standard, SMB (server message block), protocols, which are available in commercial operating systems. Further, an associated business method is described in which subscribing institutions can out-source the application serving to a third party institution, transparently. Finally, a port proxy system is provided that enables tunneling through firewalls that are configured to block communications from SMB ports.
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Citations
24 Claims
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1. A method for serving applications to a target client computer for a subscribing institution, comprising:
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configuring a third party application hosting system to provide one or more applications on behalf of subscribing institutions to requesting clients, wherein the subscribing institutions include organizations that outsourced hosting of one or more applications to an organization that controls the third party application hosting system; receiving, by the third party application hosting system via a public computer network, a signal indicating that a client computer selected a hyper-text application link for an application displayed by the subscribing institution; determining that the subscribing institution is authorized to have applications provided by the third party application hosting system based on user account information in the signal indicating that the client computer selected the hyper-text application link; sending, by the third party application hosting system, a helper application to the client computer, wherein the application resides on the third party application hosting system and the helper application is configured to control execution of the application on the client computer by downloading portions of the application for execution, periodically communicating with the third party application host system to determine whether to shutdown the application, and deleting the downloaded portions of the application when the application is shutdown; and sending at least portions of the application in response to requests from the helper application. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
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11. A computer readable storage medium, including computer executable instructions comprising:
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instructions for selecting a hyper-text application link for an application displayed on a webpage generated by a subscribing institution, wherein a selection of the hyper-text application link is sent to a third party application hosting system that stores the application; instructions for receiving an application descriptor from the third party application hosting system, wherein the third party application hosting system and the subscribing institution are on separate private computer networks and are connected to each other by a public computer network, wherein the subscribing institution includes an organization that outsourced hosting of one or more applications to an organization that controls the third party application hosting system and the third party application hosting system is configured to provide the one or more applications on behalf of the subscribing institution to requesting clients; instructions for determining that the subscribing institution is authorized to have applications provided by the third party application hosting system based on user account information in a signal indicating the selection of the hyper-text application link; instructions for executing a helper application downloaded from the third party application hosting system, wherein the helping application is configured to control the execution of the application in accordance with information in the application descriptor, wherein the application resides on the third party application hosting system, wherein the helping application is configured to retrieve and execute portions of the application, wherein the helping application is configured to shutdown the application if predetermined criteria are not satisfied, wherein the helping application is configured to delete the retrieved portions of the application when the application is shutdown; and instructions for receiving at least portions of the application in response to requests from the helping application. - View Dependent Claims (12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19)
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20. A third party application hosting system, comprising:
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a processor coupled to a computer readable storage medium, the computer readable storage medium including; instructions for storing an application for a subscribing institution; instructions for configuring a third party application hosting system to provide one or more applications on behalf of the subscribing institution to requesting clients, wherein the subscribing institution includes an organization that outsourced hosting of one or more applications to an organization that controls the third party application hosting system; instructions for receiving a signal indicating that a client computer selected a hyper-text application link for an application displayed by the subscribing institution, wherein the subscribing institution are on separate private computer networks and are connected to each other by a public computer network, wherein the signal includes an identifier of a selected application, a subscriber identifier associated with the subscribing institution, and a session identifier associated with the client computer; instructions for determining that the subscribing institution is authorized to have applications provided by the third party application hosting system based on user account information in the signal indicating that the client computer selected the hyper-text application link; instructions for sending a helper application to the client computer, wherein the helper application is configured to control execution of the application on the client computer by retrieving portions of the application, shutting down the application if predetermined criteria are not satisfied, and deleting the retrieved portions of the application when the application is shutdown; and sending at least portions of the application in response to requests from the helper application. - View Dependent Claims (21, 22, 23, 24)
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Specification