Automating cloud services lifecycle through semantic technologies

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-12278740-B2
Application number	US-202217948906-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Sep 20, 2022
Priority date	Nov 21, 2014
Publication date	Apr 15, 2025
Grant date	Apr 15, 2025

Abstract

This invention relates to methods and systems of procuring services in the cloud and specifically procurement where the requirements are defined by the consumer in a machine understandable knowledge representation language such as RDF and OWL using semantic web technology to establish a cloud agent for discovery of a service provider and effectuate the automatic generation of a contract, or service-level agreement, that can be monitored due to the coupling between the machine understandable knowledge representation language and the contract.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A method of facilitating dynamic bilateral generation of a service level agreement between a service consumer and a service provider, wherein the service consumer interacts with a graphical user interface, the graphical user interface being generated and rendered on a display of an electronic device, by executing a software product on a computing hardware of the electronic device, the computing hardware, graphical user interface and the software product being implemented on a service consumer computer system that is operatively connected to a network of remote internet computers, and a plurality of remote service providers accessible by the network of remote internet computers, the method comprising the following steps:
i. rendering within the graphical user interface a request for service object, a discover services object, a negotiate service level agreement object, a compose services object, a service attributes object, and a data and security policies object;
ii. generating an initial soft constraint comprising at least four (4) requirements comprising requirement 1 (R1), requirement 2 (R2), requirement 3 (R3), and requirement 4 (R4) (R1+R2+R3+R4) on the service consumer computer system to validate an initial search using a generated search agent Consumer Search Agent 1 (CSA1), wherein the requirements are selected from the group comprising: Service cost, Service certification, Service begin date, Service end date, Security policy, Service availability, Quality of service name, Quality of Service metrics, Penalty, Service monitoring, Service payment, Provider experience, Provider availability, Provider nationality, Consumer nationality, Technical specifications, Operating system, Hardware, Hardware constraints, VM separation, Data deletion prior to resource release, Data deletion security, Cloud location, Application software, Compatible application details, Storage size, Cloud availability, Data Backup, Data Encryption, Data Location, Storage interface, Trusted Internet Connection (TIC) separation, Connection compliance evaluation assurance level, Server type, User authentication, Cloud instance size, Cloud instance speed, Cloud instance cores, Outage escalation time, Outage notification, Outage resolution, Outage response time, Functional specifications for tasks and descriptions, cloud service layer, Service laver IAAS PAAS SAAS, Service domain, Service domain characteristics, Broker ID, Broker service, Broker service ranking, Consumer ID, Consumer description, Cloud auditor, Broker verification, Broker security audit, Broker performance audit, Broker privacy audit, Currency, Pricing model, Relaxation type, Business entity, Telephone support, Support metrics, Domain metrics, Business continuity plan, Scheduled maintenance, Support timeframe, Dependent subcontract, OWL-S process, SPARQL process, Hybrid Human-Automated Service Level Agreement, Assurance, Reliability, Throughput, Latency, Performance, Response time, and Dependent components;
(iii) said CSA1 executing a search for providers which provide service according to requirements R1+R2+R3+R4 by sending a request to the plurality of remote service providers, said CSA1 generating a list of possible providers from each reply received from the plurality of remote service providers, said CSA1 receiving each reply and displaying a No Matches—notification to the service consumer graphical user interface, and said CSA1 sending a Service Provider Identity Requested notification to a plurality of service provider graphical user interfaces with the requirements R1+R2+R3+R4, said requirements comprising a combination of functional and non-functional requirements in a machine understandable knowledge representation language to automatically generate a document that uses the initial soft constraint by detecting a selection of one or more service attribute constraints within the service attributes graphical object, and detecting a selection of one or more data and security policy constraints within the data and security policies graphical object, the machine understandable knowledge representation language selected from the group consisting of: RDF, OWL, and the functional equivalents of RDF and OWL said Provider Identity Requested notification sent using semantic web technology to form a federated SPARQL query cloud agent representing the initial soft constraint and sending a Request for Service from the service consumer computer system to the plurality of remote service providers, wherein said Request for Service specifies the requirements R1+R2+R3+R4 of the initial soft constraint;
(iv) receiving at the computer system of the service consumer a list of matching services for service providers that match the first constraints group, and where the list of matching services contains zero service providers;
(v) generating Consumer Search Agent 2 (CSA2) on the service consumer computer system by relaxing one requirement and forming requirements Relaxed1+R2+R3+R4, said CSA2 executing a search for providers which provide service according to requirements Relaxed1+R2+R3+R4 by sending a second request to the plurality of remote service providers, said CSA2 generating a list of possible providers from each second reply received from the plurality of remote service providers, said CSA2 receiving each second reply and displaying a second No Matches-notification to the service consumer graphical user interface, and said CSA2 sending a Provider Counteroffer Requested notification to the plurality of service provider computer systems with the requirements Relaxed1+R2+R3+R4, said requirements Relaxed1+R2+R3+R4 comprising a combination of functional and non-functional requirements in a machine understandable knowledge representation language to automatically generate a document that uses the requirements by detecting a selection of one or more service attribute constraints within the service attributes graphical object, and detecting a selection of one or more data and security policy constraints within the data and security policies graphical object, the machine understandable knowledge representation language selected from the group consisting of: RDF, OWL, and the functional equivalents of RDF and OWL, said Provider Counteroffer Requested notifications sent using semantic web technology to form a federated SPARQL query cloud agent representing the requirements and sending a Request for Service from the service consumer computer system to the plurality of remote service providers, wherein said Request for Service specifies the requirements Relaxed1+R2+R3+R4;
(vi) generating a Provider Search Agent (PSA1) to obtain provider capacity, market availability, and market pricing by sending a request to each service provider computer system listed in the second list of possible providers;
(vii) receiving data from the PSA1 comprising provider capacity, market availability, and market pricing and sending the PSA1 data to each service provider computer system that responds to the PSA1 request, and generating a Service Provider Counteroffer having requirements R1+Relaxed2+R3+R4 from at least one service provider computer system;
(viii) sending the Service Provider Counteroffer having requirements R1+Relaxed2+R3+R4 to the service consumer computer system and displaying on the GUI for evaluation;
(ix) generating on the service consumer computer system a re-check CSA1 (R-CSA1) executing a search for providers which provide service according to requirements R1+R2+R3+R4 by sending a request to the plurality of remote service provider computer systems, said R-CSA1 generating a R-CSA1 list of possible providers from each R-CSA1 reply received from the plurality of remote service provider computer systems, said R-CSA1 receiving each R-CSA1 reply and displaying the R-CSA1 reply to the service consumer graphical user interface;
(x) automatically generating a Service Level Ag

Assignees

• Univ Maryland

Inventors

• Joshi Karuna
• Finin Timothy
• Yesha Yelena

Classifications

• H04L41/22

  comprising specially adapted graphical user interfaces [GUI] · CPC title

• H04L41/5051

  Service on demand, e.g. definition and deployment of services in real time · CPC title

• G06F3/0482

  Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus · CPC title

• G06Q30/0611

  Request for offers or quotes · CPC title

• G06Q50/10

  Services · CPC title