U.S. patent application number 16/791050 was filed with the patent office on 2020-06-11 for constraints and constraint sharing in a catalog service platform.
This patent application is currently assigned to Amazon Technologies, Inc.. The applicant listed for this patent is Amazon Technologies, Inc.. Invention is credited to Zachary Thomas Crowell, Frederik Christophe Delacourt, Richard Curtis Edwards, JR., Julien Jacques Ellie, Benjamin David Newman, Quan Binh To, Christopher Whitaker.
Application Number | 20200184394 16/791050 |
Document ID | / |
Family ID | 54608983 |
Filed Date | 2020-06-11 |
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United States Patent
Application |
20200184394 |
Kind Code |
A1 |
Delacourt; Frederik Christophe ;
et al. |
June 11, 2020 |
CONSTRAINTS AND CONSTRAINT SHARING IN A CATALOG SERVICE
PLATFORM
Abstract
A service provider system may implement an enterprise catalog
service that manages software products and portfolios of software
products on behalf of service provider customer organizations.
Through an administrator interface of the service, a customer
organization administrator may create constraints on the use of the
software products, and each constraint may include one or more
rules about how the products can be launched. These may include
environmental constraints (specifying a region in which a product
launches), restrictions on input parameter values (including the
types of resource instances on which a product can be launched),
quotas (controlling the number of product installations), or
billing constraints. Constraints may be applied on a
user-to-product arc or on a portfolio-to-product arc. Constraints
may be stored as objects, and reference to those objects may be
added to product or portfolio objects. Constraints may be shared
across object versions, portfolios, or service provider customer
accounts.
Inventors: |
Delacourt; Frederik Christophe;
(Mercer Island, WA) ; To; Quan Binh; (Redmond,
WA) ; Whitaker; Christopher; (Sammamish, WA) ;
Edwards, JR.; Richard Curtis; (Seattle, WA) ; Ellie;
Julien Jacques; (Issaquah, WA) ; Crowell; Zachary
Thomas; (Redmond, WA) ; Newman; Benjamin David;
(Seattle, WA) |
|
Applicant: |
Name |
City |
State |
Country |
Type |
Amazon Technologies, Inc. |
Seattle |
WA |
US |
|
|
Assignee: |
Amazon Technologies, Inc.
Seattle
WA
|
Family ID: |
54608983 |
Appl. No.: |
16/791050 |
Filed: |
February 14, 2020 |
Related U.S. Patent Documents
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Application
Number |
Filing Date |
Patent Number |
|
|
14538714 |
Nov 11, 2014 |
10565534 |
|
|
16791050 |
|
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Current U.S.
Class: |
1/1 |
Current CPC
Class: |
G06Q 10/00 20130101;
Y02P 90/80 20151101; G06Q 10/06313 20130101; G06F 8/65 20130101;
G06F 8/71 20130101; Y02P 90/86 20151101 |
International
Class: |
G06Q 10/06 20060101
G06Q010/06; G06F 8/71 20060101 G06F008/71; G06F 8/65 20060101
G06F008/65; G06Q 10/00 20060101 G06Q010/00 |
Claims
1.-20. (canceled)
21. A system, comprising: one or more computing nodes, each of the
computing nodes comprising at least one processor and a memory,
wherein the one or more computing nodes implement an enterprise
catalog service; and wherein the enterprise catalog service is
configured to: create, in response to a request, a constraint,
wherein the constraint comprises one or more rules, each rule
restricting how software products to which the rule is applied are
to be used by one or more end users; associate the constraint to
one or more software products, wherein associating the constraint
to the one or more software products subjects the use of the one or
more software products by the one or more end users to the one or
more rules; provide the constraint to a product delivery platform
upon the use of at least one of the software products by an end
user of the one or more end users, for the product delivery
platform to apply the one or more rules of the constraint to the
use of the software product by the end user; and share the
constraint with another entity.
22. The system of claim 21, wherein the one or more end users are
end users of a client; wherein the request to create a constraint
is received from an administrator of the client; and wherein to
share the constraint with another entity further comprises: receive
another request from the administrator to share the constraint with
a different recipient administrator; and send to the different
recipient administrator, in response to the other request, a
notification that the constraint is being shared with the different
recipient administrator, wherein the notification comprises the
constraint, an identifier of the constraint, an object representing
the constraint, or a unique resource identifier for the object
representing the constraint.
23. The system of claim 21, wherein to share the constraint with
another entity further comprises: receive input indicating that a
new version of at least one of the software products is available;
update the at least one software product to the new version of the
at least one software product; and associate, automatically and
without user intervention, the constraint to the new version of the
at least one software product.
24. The system of claim 21, wherein the one or more software
products are in a portfolio; wherein associating the constraint to
the one or more software products comprises adding the constraint
to the portfolio; wherein the portfolio further comprises the one
or more end users who have been granted permission to discover and
launch the one or more software products in the portfolio,
including the end user; and wherein to share the constraint with
another entity further comprises: share the constraint with a
second portfolio, wherein the second portfolio comprises the one or
more software products and a different one or more end users who
have been granted permission to discover and launch the one or more
software products in the second portfolio; wherein sharing the
constraint with the second portfolio subjects the use of the one or
more software products in the second portfolio to the one or more
rules of the constraint when the one or more software products are
used by at least one of the different one or more end users.
25. The system of claim 21, wherein the one or more end users are
end users of a client; wherein the request to create a constraint
is received from an administrator of the client; and wherein to
share the constraint with another entity further comprises: make
the constraint discoverable to administrators of a different
client, wherein making the constraint discoverable comprises
publishing one or more of: a name for the constraint or a
description of the constraint.
26. The system of claim 21, wherein the one or more end users are
end users of a client; wherein the request to create the constraint
is received from an administrator of the client; and wherein the
enterprise catalog service is further configured to: discover
another constraint, wherein the other constraint was created and
shared by another administrator of the client; import the other
constraint; and associate the other constraint to the one or more
software products, wherein associating the other constraint to the
one or more software products subjects the use of the one or more
software products by the one or more end users of the client to one
or more different rules of the other constraint.
27. The system of claim 21, wherein the one or more end users are
end users of a client; wherein the request to create a constraint
is received from an administrator of the client; and wherein to
share the constraint with another entity further comprises:
receive, from the administrator of the client, input initiating an
operation to share the selected constraint with another entity; and
initiate an approval workflow to request, on behalf of the
administrator, approval to share the constraint with the other
entity.
28. A method, comprising: performing, by one or more computers that
implement an enterprise catalog service on behalf of a service
provider: creating, in response to a request, a constraint, wherein
the constraint comprises one or more rules, each rule restricting
how software products to which the rule is applied are to be used
by one or more end users; associating the constraint to one or more
software products, wherein associating the constraint to the one or
more software products subjects the use of the one or more software
products by the one or more end users to the one or more rules;
providing the constraint to a product fulfillment component, for
the product fulfillment component to apply the one or more rules of
the constraint to the use of the software product by an end user of
the one or more end users; and sharing the constraint with another
entity.
29. The method of claim 28, wherein the one or more end users are
end users of a client; wherein the request to create a constraint
is received from an administrator of the client; and wherein
sharing the constraint with another entity further comprises:
receiving another request from the administrator to share the
constraint with a different recipient administrator; and sending to
the different recipient administrator, in response to the other
request, a notification that the constraint is being shared with
the different recipient administrator, wherein the notification
comprises the constraint, an identifier of the constraint, an
object representing the constraint, or a unique resource identifier
for the object representing the constraint.
30. The method of claim 28, wherein sharing the constraint with
another entity further comprises: receiving input indicating that a
new version of at least one of the software products is available;
updating the at least one software product to the new version of
the at least one software product; and associating, automatically
and without user intervention, the constraint to the new version of
the at least one software product.
31. The method of claim 28, wherein the one or more software
products are in a portfolio; wherein associating the constraint to
the one or more software products comprises adding the constraint
to the portfolio; wherein the portfolio further comprises the one
or more end users who have been granted permission to discover and
launch the one or more software products in the portfolio,
including the end user; and wherein sharing the constraint with
another entity further comprises: sharing the constraint with a
second portfolio, wherein the second portfolio comprises the one or
more software products and a different one or more end users who
have been granted permission to discover and launch the one or more
software products in the second portfolio; wherein sharing the
constraint with the second portfolio subjects the use of the one or
more software products in the second portfolio to the one or more
rules of the constraint when the one or more software products are
used by at least one of the different one or more end users.
32. The method of claim 28, wherein the one or more end users are
end users of a client; wherein the request to create a constraint
is received from an administrator of the client; and wherein
sharing the constraint with another entity further comprises:
making the constraint discoverable to administrators of a different
client, wherein making the constraint discoverable comprises
publishing one or more of: a name for the constraint or a
description of the constraint.
33. The method of claim 28, wherein the one or more end users are
end users of a client; wherein the request to create the constraint
is received from an administrator of the client; and wherein the
one or more computers that implement the enterprise catalog service
on behalf of the service provider further perform: discovering
another constraint, wherein the other constraint was created and
shared by another administrator of the client; importing the other
constraint; and associating the other constraint to the one or more
software products, wherein associating the other constraint to the
one or more software products subjects the use of the one or more
software products by the one or more end users of the client to one
or more different rules of the other constraint.
34. The method of claim 28, wherein the one or more end users are
end users of a client; wherein the request to create a constraint
is received from an administrator of the client; and wherein
sharing the constraint with another entity further comprises:
receiving, from the administrator of the client, input initiating
an operation to share the selected constraint with another entity;
and initiating an approval workflow to request, on behalf of the
administrator, approval to share the constraint with the other
entity.
35. One or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media
storing program instructions that when executed on or across one or
more processors of an enterprise catalog service cause the
enterprise catalog service to: create, in response to a request, a
constraint, wherein the constraint comprises one or more rules,
each rule restricting how software products to which the rule is
applied are to be used by one or more end users; associate the
constraint to one or more software products, wherein associating
the constraint to the one or more software products subjects the
use of the one or more software products by the one or more end
users to the one or more rules; provide the constraint to a product
delivery platform upon the use of at least one of the software
products by an end user of the one or more end users, for the
product delivery platform to apply the one or more rules of the
constraint to the use of the software product by the end user; and
share the constraint with another entity.
36. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media
of claim 35, wherein the one or more end users are end users of a
client; wherein the request to create a constraint is received from
an administrator of the client; and wherein to share the constraint
with another entity, the program instructions, when executed on or
across the one or more processors, further cause the enterprise
catalog service to: receive another request from the administrator
to share the constraint with a different recipient administrator;
and send to the different recipient administrator, in response to
the other request, a notification that the constraint is being
shared with the different recipient administrator, wherein the
notification comprises the constraint, an identifier of the
constraint, an object representing the constraint, or a unique
resource identifier for the object representing the constraint.
37. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media
of claim 35, wherein to share the constraint with another entity,
the program instructions, when executed on or across the one or
more processors, further cause the enterprise catalog service to:
receive input indicating that a new version of at least one of the
software products is available; update the at least one software
product to the new version of the at least one software product;
and associate, automatically and without user intervention, the
constraint to the new version of the at least one software
product.
38. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media
of claim 35, wherein the one or more software products are in a
portfolio; wherein associating the constraint to the one or more
software products comprises adding the constraint to the portfolio;
wherein the portfolio further comprises the one or more end users
who have been granted permission to discover and launch the one or
more software products in the portfolio, including the end user;
and wherein to share the constraint with another entity, the
program instructions, when executed on or across the one or more
processors, further cause the enterprise catalog service to: share
the constraint with a second portfolio, wherein the second
portfolio comprises the one or more software products and a
different one or more end users who have been granted permission to
discover and launch the one or more software products in the second
portfolio; wherein sharing the constraint with the second portfolio
subjects the use of the one or more software products in the second
portfolio to the one or more rules of the constraint when the one
or more software products are used by at least one of the different
one or more end users.
39. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media
of claim 35, wherein the one or more end users are end users of a
client; wherein the request to create a constraint is received from
an administrator of the client; and wherein to share the constraint
with another entity, the program instructions, when executed on or
across the one or more processors, further cause the enterprise
catalog service to: make the constraint discoverable to
administrators of a different client, wherein making the constraint
discoverable comprises publishing one or more of: a name for the
constraint or a description of the constraint.
40. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media
of claim 35, wherein the one or more end users are end users of a
client; wherein the request to create the constraint is received
from an administrator of the client; and wherein the program
instructions, when executed on or across the one or more
processors, further cause enterprise catalog service to: discover
another constraint, wherein the other constraint was created and
shared by another administrator of the client; import the other
constraint; and associate the other constraint to the one or more
software products, wherein associating the other constraint to the
one or more software products subjects the use of the one or more
software products by the one or more end users of the client to one
or more different rules of the other constraint.
Description
[0001] This application is a continuation of U.S. patent
application Ser. No. 14/538,714, filed Nov. 11, 2014, which is
hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.
BACKGROUND
[0002] Many companies and other organizations operate computer
networks that interconnect numerous computing systems to support
their operations, such as with the computing systems being
co-located (e.g., as part of a local network) or instead located in
multiple distinct geographical locations (e.g., connected via one
or more private or public intermediate networks). For example, data
centers housing significant numbers of interconnected computing
systems have become commonplace, such as private data centers that
are operated by and on behalf of a single organization, and public
data centers that are operated by entities as businesses to provide
computing resources to customers or clients. Some public data
center operators provide network access, power, and secure
installation facilities for hardware owned by various clients,
while other public data center operators provide "full service"
facilities that also include hardware resources made available for
use by their clients. However, as the scale and scope of typical
data centers has increased, the tasks of provisioning,
administering, and managing the physical computing resources have
become increasingly complicated.
[0003] Many large companies are attempting to move data center
resources to cloud computing environments. These companies may use
large amounts of desktop computing software that must be procured,
kept up-to-date, and distributed across many desktop computers in
multiple locations. For a large enterprise, it can be difficult to
keep all of the applications they may wish to use up to date using
the traditional approach of physically installing applications on
each machine. For example, deploying and managing applications at
scale is difficult, complex and requires expensive on premise
infrastructure. In addition, updates and patches are complex to
deploy without affecting user productivity, and legacy applications
typically only run on older operation system versions. It can also
be difficult for a large enterprise to deploy applications
on-demand and their own line-of-business applications. In many
cases, there is a lack of transparency into cost controls, spending
and usage related to desktop applications and software services.
Therefore, large enterprises can miss opportunities for license
synergies across the organization.
[0004] For example, within a large enterprise, individual business
units often procure their own software and services. When this is
not done in a controlled fashion, the resulting sprawl of
unapproved products creates compliance risks that administrators
have to address. Different organizations have taken a variety of
approaches to increase standardization and enforce compliance. Some
attempted to address these issues by setting policies centrally,
educating users, and relying on them to comply. Often, users had to
bear most of the burden for compliance, impacting productivity and
increasing risk. Other organizations attempted to address these
issues by centralizing control, so that only a small and trusted
set of users could have access to the most powerful tools,
sacrificing agility and self-service.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
[0005] FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating one embodiment of a
service provider system that is configured to implement an
enterprise catalog service.
[0006] FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating an example provider
network that provides a storage virtualization service and a
hardware virtualization service to clients, according to at least
some embodiments.
[0007] FIG. 3 illustrates tasks that may be performed by an IT
administrator and other tasks that may be performed by an end user
during different phases of product deployment through an enterprise
catalog service, according to at least some embodiments.
[0008] FIG. 4 is a block diagram illustrating one embodiment of a
service provider system that is configured to provide on-demand
delivery of applications to computing resource instances of its
customers' end users.
[0009] FIG. 5 illustrates the use of a resource stack template to
build and deploy a server product, according to at least some
embodiments.
[0010] FIG. 6 is a flow diagram illustrating one embodiment of a
method for creating and applying a constraint on the use of a
software product an enterprise catalog service.
[0011] FIG. 7 is a flow diagram illustrating one embodiment of a
method for managing desktop applications through an enterprise
catalog service.
[0012] FIG. 8 is a flow diagram illustrating one embodiment of a
method for managing server products through an enterprise catalog
service.
[0013] FIGS. 9A-9D illustrate examples of the information presented
through a service provider console of an enterprise catalog service
when creating a constraint, according to at least some
embodiments.
[0014] FIG. 10 is a flow diagram illustrating one embodiment of a
method for defining a constraint in an enterprise catalog
service.
[0015] FIGS. 11A-11B illustrate examples of the information
presented through a service provider console of an enterprise
catalog when adding a constraint to a product and to a portfolio,
respectively, according to at least some embodiments.
[0016] FIG. 12 is a flow diagram illustrating one embodiment of a
method for adding constraints to individual software products.
[0017] FIG. 13 is a flow diagram illustrating one embodiment of a
method for adding a constraint to a portfolio.
[0018] FIGS. 14A-14B illustrate examples of the information
presented through a service provider console of an enterprise
catalog when sharing a constraint according to at least some
embodiments.
[0019] FIG. 15 is a flow diagram illustrating one embodiment of a
method for sharing constraints.
[0020] FIG. 16 is a block diagram illustrating an example computer
system that implements some or all of the techniques described
herein, according to different embodiments.
[0021] While embodiments are described herein by way of example for
several embodiments and illustrative drawings, those skilled in the
art will recognize that embodiments are not limited to the
embodiments or drawings described. It should be understood, that
the drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to
limit embodiments to the particular form disclosed, but on the
contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents
and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope as defined by
the appended claims. The headings used herein are for
organizational purposes only and are not meant to be used to limit
the scope of the description or the claims. As used throughout this
application, the word "may" is used in a permissive sense (i.e.,
meaning having the potential to), rather than the mandatory sense
(i.e., meaning must). Similarly, the words "include", "including",
and "includes" mean including, but not limited to.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
[0022] The systems and methods described herein for implementing an
enterprise catalog service may, in various embodiments, enable
administrators within customer organizations to create catalogs and
portfolios of software products (e.g., enterprise-wide catalogs,
portfolios, and/or other catalogs containing desktop applications
and/or server products) and to share them with specific sets of
users. For example, through the enterprise catalog service,
administrators may be able to offer a standard set of products for
common use cases to the end users in their organizations that meet
their organizational goals and requirements. In some embodiments,
the enterprise catalog service may allow administrators (e.g., IT
administrators or buyers) to discover software products, provision
service provider resources on which to deploy those software
products, and manage those software products through a service
provider management console. Similarly, through the enterprise
catalog service, administrators may be able to define constraints
(e.g., rules governing the use of products and/or portfolios), and
may share those constraints (once defined) for application to other
products/portfolios and/or with other administrators. The use of
the enterprise catalog services described herein may benefit
customer organizations by increasing standardization, enforcing
compliance with organizational policies, reducing the costs of
compliance, and improving agility. In some embodiments, once the
software products managed by the enterprise catalog service are in
use, administrators can track their usage and monitor health
through the service, in order to provide the best possible
experience for their users.
[0023] In some embodiments, end users may access the enterprise
catalog service through an end user console to discover software
products and provision them for their common use cases. For
example, an administrator may define a product once and enable
self-service and repeated use by a group of end users. After
provisioning the products, users may track their usage, monitor
health, and manage the resources through the end user console or
through the service provider management console. In one example, a
development manager might create a product for a standard
development and test environment that will be used by the
developers on his team. Each developer can provision and use the
development and test environment in a self-service fashion, and
then shut it down (de-provision it) when it is no longer
needed.
[0024] As described above, in some embodiments, administrators may
access the enterprise catalog service through a service provider
management console to create and manage catalogs or portfolios.
Each catalog (e.g., a default or enterprise-wide catalog or one of
multiple private catalogs or portfolios that are accessible only by
a subset of the end users in the customer organization) and/or
portfolio may contains a set of products. The products in any given
catalog may all be of the same type or may include products of
different types, in different embodiments. For example, a given
catalog or portfolio may include one or more desktop applications
(e.g., desktop applications packaged as machine images, application
binaries or other executable objects), one or more virtualized
application packages (e.g., applications packaged for delivery to
desktops on physical computing devices and/or one or more virtual
desktop instances, or resource stack templates, dependent on
configuration settings selected for the catalog/portfolio by the
administrator that created it.
[0025] The enterprise catalog service may, in some embodiments,
provide access to product listings from third parties (i.e.,
entities other than the service provider customers and the service
provider itself). For example, in some embodiments, the enterprise
catalog service may include (or provide an interface to) a product
discovery service through which administrators and users can
discover and/or obtain access to software products that were
developed by (or are published and/or sourced by) two or more
independent software vendors (ISVs). For example, an administrator
in an organization that is a customer of the enterprise catalog
service may procure a product through the product discovery
service, customize it, configure data protection settings
appropriate for the customer organization, and publish it to end
users in the customer organization through an enterprise-wide or
private catalog that the administrator owns and/or controls. In
this way, administrators may be able to not only ingest their own
company products but may also be able to find and subscribe to
products from external sources. The products ingested by the
enterprise catalog service for inclusion in a customer
organization's catalog may require paid subscriptions or licensing
fees (e.g., fees charged hourly, monthly, annually, or using any
other pricing schedule), or may be free for service provider
customers and their end users to use.
[0026] In some embodiments, desktop applications that are included
in a private catalog or portfolio and managed by the enterprise
catalog service on behalf of a service provider customer
organization may be deployed to end users in the customer
organization through an application fulfillment platform that
interacts with the enterprise catalog service. For example, an
application fulfillment platform may provide on-demand delivery and
installation of applications to virtual desktop instances in a
cloud computing environment for the benefit of end users (e.g.,
employees or members of a business, enterprise, or other
organization that is a customer of the service provider). In some
embodiments, the application fulfillment platform may employ a
variety of services to manage collections of desktop applications
that are maintained by the enterprise catalog service (e.g.,
catalogs or portfolios of desktop applications) and to deliver
virtualized application packages to end user machines or virtual
desktop instances. In some embodiments, end users may access the
enterprise catalog service through an end user console of the
application fulfillment platform.
[0027] As noted above, in some embodiments, customers of a service
provider (e.g., buyers or IT administrators within an enterprise)
may be able to discover and subscribe to third party desktop
applications (or desktop applications that have been purchased or
licensed from a third party by the service provider) on-demand and
make them available to their end users on virtual desktop
instances. In addition, an IT administrator of a customer may be
able to publish and manage the customer's own line-of-business
desktop applications, which may be accessible only for their end
users.
[0028] In various embodiments, the application fulfillment
platforms described herein may provide IT administrators full
control over their virtual desktop instances with dynamic
application management tools. For example, IT administrators in
customer organizations may be able to build application catalogs or
portfolios (e.g., using an enterprise catalog service such as those
described herein) for their end users that are composed of
applications from sourced through the platform and/or their own
private applications, where a portfolio is a collection of
applications and corresponding constraints (including maintenance
schedules and license types), and that can be assigned to end users
or groups of users. Note that as used herein, references to
"assigning" a product or portfolio to an end user or to a group of
end users may describe actions or operations by which the end user
or group of end users is granted permission to install, subscribe
to, or launch the product (or the products in the portfolio). In
some embodiments, these actions or operations to grant permissions
to an end user or group of end users may also be described as
"creating an entitlement" to a product or portfolio for an end user
or group of end users. In some embodiments, customers may allow
their end users to install applications on-demand. IT
administrators may interact with the application fulfillment
platforms through a management console (sometimes referred to
herein as a service provider system console or an administrator
console) that offers IT administrators access to the tools for
managing catalogs or portfolios (e.g., catalogs or portfolios of
desktop applications that are maintained by the enterprise catalog
service), application updates, constraints, constraint groups,
application licenses and/or their own private applications. The
systems described herein may allow customers to efficiently manage
their software application spending with detailed usage reports and
monthly subscriptions. Because the service provider may be able to
negotiate bulk and/or wholesale prices from application vendors,
the service provider may be able to offer them to customer (e.g.,
individually or in bundles containing groups of popular
applications) with competitive pricing.
[0029] In some embodiments, an IT administrator of a service
provider customer organization may submit information to an
enterprise catalog service requesting that one or more end users be
granted access to multiple software products. In some embodiments,
this input may be submitted as a single request (e.g., a request to
granting access to a portfolio containing multiple software
products) or within multiple requests, each requesting that access
be granted to one or more individual software products. Note that
in some embodiments, the software products may include products
that are sourced from different entities (e.g., they may include
products that were developed or published by the customer
organization, products that were developed or published by the
service provider, and/or products that were developed by third
parties, such as independent software vendors). For each of the
software products for which access by one or more end users is
requested, the application fulfillment platform (or an entitlement
service thereof) may create and store an entitlement record that
indicates the association between the end user and the software
product (e.g., a separate record for each <user, product>
tuple). Note that, in some embodiments, if the request is a request
to grant access to a portfolio of software products, a separate
entitlement record may be created for each product in the
portfolio. In other embodiments, if the request is a request to
grant access to a portfolio of software products, a single
entitlement record may be created for the portfolio, and this
single entitlement record may be consulted when the end user
executes any of the software products in the portfolio.
[0030] As described herein, application fulfillment platforms may
provide a self-service model to end users through an application on
their virtual desktop instances. For example, through this
application (which is referred to herein as a desktop application
management module), end users can discover and manage an
application portfolio that best fits their needs, with the ability
to install applications marked as optional by their IT
administrators. IT administrators may also have the option to
authorize their users to be able to request access to additional
applications and/or to receive notifications of new applications or
application updates as they become available.
[0031] Note that in the context of the services described herein,
the terms "customer" and "buyer" may refer to an enterprise, a
business, or another organization that receives services (e.g.,
catalog services, application management services, and/or software
product fulfillment services) from a service provider on behalf of
their end users. In this context, the term "sellers" may refer to
software vendors that provide their applications for use within the
application fulfillment platforms described herein, and the terms
"users" and "end users" may refer to employees or members of the
enterprise, business, or other organization that receives services
on their behalf from the service provider. In various embodiments,
users may access software products that are fulfilled through the
platforms and services described herein on their own computing
resources instances (e.g., on end user machines and/or virtual
desktop instances) or may invoke the execution of server products
(e.g., services implemented by resource stacks of service provider
resources) on their behalf. Note that in various embodiments, an
enterprise catalog service "user" may represent an identity and
access management role (e.g., a child account of a root account for
a service provider customer or service provider customer
organization) or may be an end user in a customer organization
(e.g., an active directory user), and the enterprise catalog
service may support groups of both of these types of users (e.g.,
active directory groups or identity and access management
groups).
[0032] In some embodiments, applications (e.g., desktop
applications) may be delivered to various end users' virtual
desktop instances using an application virtualization technology
that encapsulates and isolates applications in dedicated
containers. For example, a packaging service implemented on the
application fulfillment platform may be configured to transform
applications into virtualized application packages and to deliver
them to virtual desktop instances or physical desktops running over
an operating system on an end user's machine. The virtualized
application packages, when executed, may perform and behave as if
they are natively installed, without the need for actual
installation.
[0033] As described herein, an application fulfillment platform may
offer customers (or more specifically, IT administrators of those
customers) the ability to provision applications on-demand at scale
while maintaining centralized control, security and compliance. For
example, in some embodiments, these platforms (and corresponding
services thereof) may be integrated with a management console
through which the IT administrators may discover and subscribe to a
broad selection of applications from a variety of sources, build
catalogs and/or portfolios of applications from a variety of
sources and having a variety of subscription/licensing models,
control access to applications with granular access policy
enforcement on a per user basis, manage application updates, access
detailed usage reports for their enterprise, application portfolios
and end users, and/or monitor real-time installs as well as license
activation on a per application basis.
[0034] As noted above, the application fulfillment platforms
described herein may be integrated with or may be configured to
operate in conjunction with an enterprise catalog service, such as
those described herein. As described herein, administrators may
create catalogs or portfolios of products and resources from a
variety of suppliers, and may share them with a specific set of
users. These products may include not only desktop applications to
be delivered to virtual desktop instances as virtualized
application packages, but may also include server products (e.g.,
server-side applications to be executed on a server on behalf of a
customer or end user) and/or applications to be delivered as
executable files (e.g., application binaries or machine images) to
be installed on an end user's computing device or virtual desktop
instance. In some embodiments, once the enterprise catalog service
is used to create a catalog or portfolio of desktop applications,
these applications may be installed as virtualized application
packages by end user at a later time (e.g., on-demand). The
integration of the enterprise catalog service with a resource stack
management service through which server products may be defined and
deployed in described in more detail below, according to various
embodiments.
[0035] The enterprise catalog services described herein may be
implemented in whole or in part on an enterprise catalog service
platform that includes (or operates in conjunction with) various
components and services in the service provider network that are
used in managing collections of software products on behalf of
service provider customer organizations and their end users. For
example, the enterprise catalog service platform may include (or
provide an interface to) a product discovery service, robust
catalog management tools, tools for authoring and managing the
lifecycles of products, product listings, and product offerings, a
catalog store (e.g., an indexed, revision-controlled document store
where all products and offers are mastered), a lifecycle system
responsible for validation, approval, and promotion workflow steps,
and a catalog publishing system.
Terminology
[0036] In the context of the enterprise catalog services described
herein, the term "product" may refer to any resource (e.g., a
machine image, resource stack template, desktop application binary
or virtualized application package) that has been prepared for
consumption by other users and that may be included in a catalog of
such resources or listed in a portfolio of such resources. Products
may be ingested by an enterprise catalog service through the IT
administrator console and, once added to a catalog or portfolio,
may be fulfilled (which may also be referred to as being launched)
by end users through an end user console. In various embodiments,
actions that can be taken on a product may include one or more of
the following:
[0037] 1. Create
[0038] 2. Read
[0039] 3. Update (e.g., change aspect metadata, add a version, or
change accessibility)
[0040] 4. Publish views
[0041] 5. Sunset a product or version thereof
[0042] In the context of the enterprise catalog services described
herein, the term "offer" may refer to a contract that captures
terms of use, which may include pricing information. An Offer can
reference multiple products (e.g., a bundle). The phrase "pricing
information" may refer to a collection of terms or a way of
pricing. As with products, changes to offers may be tracked across
multiple immutable revisions. In some embodiments, the actions that
can be taken on an offer may include the following:
[0043] 1. Create
[0044] 2. Read
[0045] 3. Update (Change price, Change availability, Change
accessibility)
[0046] 4. Publish views
[0047] In the context of the enterprise catalog services described
herein, the term "listing" may refer to a human readable view of a
combination of products and offers. There may be different ways to
present a listing, in different embodiments, the goal of which is
to allow administrators, buyers and/or end users to make informed
purchase decisions from a specific business context. Ratings, and
reviews, and recommendations may also be included in (or associated
with) listings. Listings may be mutable and may be consolidated, in
some embodiments. Various enterprise catalog service APIs
associated with listings are shown below.
[0048] In the context of the enterprise catalog services described
herein, the term "subscription" may refer to a record of an
agreement of an offer by a user. This agreement entitles a user to
the products specified in the chosen terms of the offer. Additional
parameters of the terms may also be collected in a subscription. In
some embodiments, the actions that can be taken on a subscription
may include the following:
[0049] 1. Create
[0050] 2. Read
[0051] 3. Update (Renew, End)
[0052] In the context of the enterprise catalog services described
herein, an entitlement may be a collection of allowed product
actions for each user. In some embodiments, the actions that can be
taken on an entitlement may include the following:
[0053] 1. Create, Update, Delete (private)
[0054] 2. Read
[0055] In the context of the enterprise catalog services described
herein, an approval may be a workflow that must happen before one
or more of the previously described actions on a product can be
taken. For example, an approval workflow may be invoked in response
to an end user request to subscribe to a product and/or for
permission to consume the product.
[0056] In various embodiments, the enterprise catalog service may
expose a variety of APIs (some of which may not exposed to
customers or end users). For example, in some embodiments the
enterprise catalog service may expose any or all of the following
APIs for use in managing catalogs and/or portfolios of software
products on behalf of customer organizations and their end users.
[0057] DescribeListings [0058] DescribeListingVersions [0059]
PutListing [0060] CreateListing [0061] UpdateListing [0062]
CreatePortfolio [0063] ImportPortfolio [0064] UpdatePortfolio
[0065] DescribePortfolios [0066] DeletePortfolio [0067]
ListPortfolios [0068] PutPortfolioAccessPolicy [0069]
RemovePortfolioAccessPolicy [0070] ListPortfolioAccessPolicies
[0071] DescribePortfolioAccessPolicies [0072] PutConstraint [0073]
RemoveConstraint [0074] ListConstraints [0075]
DescribePortfolioConstraints [0076] AddPortfolioListings [0077]
RemovePortfolioListings [0078] SearchListings [0079]
DescribeListingFilters [0080] BrowseListings [0081]
GetLaunchContexts
Enterprise Catalog Service Architecture
[0082] From the standpoint of a high level software architecture, a
service provider platform that implements an enterprise catalog
service such as those described herein may be comprised of the
following components: a catalog service, a service catalog runtime,
an inbox service, a resource stack management service, one or more
administrator/management consoles, and one or more end user
consoles, each of which may provide a portion of the functionality
of the enterprise catalog service. The catalog service may be the
core storage and version control mechanism for the enterprise
catalog service. IT administrators may create and publish products
and product versions that are stored in the catalog service, and IT
administrators create portfolios and assign products to portfolios.
Catalog information, portfolios and association between catalogs or
portfolios and products may be stored in the catalog service. The
service catalog runtime may be responsible for fulfilling products
(e.g., products defined using resource stack templates). The
service catalog runtime may also provide support for "managed
services" whereby the end-user does not have access to the service
provider resources that are created when deploying a product.
[0083] In some embodiments, an inbox service may allow various
service provider services to send targeted, actionable "messages"
to users e.g., (administrators or end users). The inbox service may
define the notion of an "inbox" as a target for such messages. The
inbox service may allow administrators to define who has access to
various messages and where notifications are sent when messages
arrive in a particular inbox. In some embodiments, the enterprise
catalog service may uses the resource stack management service as
the underlying fulfillment engine for server products. In various
embodiments, one or more administrator/management consoles may
provide graphical user interfaces for creating and managing
products and portfolios, and one or more end user consoles may
provide graphical user interfaces for launching and managing
products.
[0084] Note that in some embodiments, a workflow service may be
used to run workflows to complete various tasks in conjunction with
the enterprise catalog service, the application fulfillment
platform, or the resource stack management service. For example, in
some embodiments, there may be a separate workflow for each
operation performed on a resource stack. In a specific example,
when a call is made to launch a resource stack, a "LaunchStack"
workflow (e.g., one that is specific to that combination of user
and resource stack name) may be created to monitor and harvest any
information from the resource stack. The workflow service may also
provide a synchronization mechanism to ensure that only certain
operations are being performed at the same time (for example,
prevent an update operation from starting if the target resource
stack is still in the process of being created).
[0085] FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a portion of a
service provider system that implements an enterprise catalog
service, according to at least one embodiment. The system includes
an enterprise catalog service platform through which IT
administrators within service provider customer organizations
(e.g., enterprises that receive computing services from the service
provider) can manage catalogs and/or portfolios of desktop
applications and/or server products, as well as usage policies
(e.g., constraints on the use of those desktop applications and/or
server products) for their end users. As illustrated in FIG. 1,
system 100 may include an enterprise catalog service platform 108
(which may embody both a catalog service and a service catalog
runtime, such as those described above) that is configured to
create and manage one or more enterprise catalogs 118, private
catalogs 122 and/or portfolios 120 on behalf of service provider
customers and their end users. Note that, in some embodiments, at
least some of private catalogs 122 may represent logical
collections of products to which a respective end user or other
principal has access (each of which may include products that are
included in one or more portfolios 120). As described in more
detail herein, an IT administrator 102 may interact with the
enterprise catalog service platform 108 through a service provider
management console 106 to create a desktop application, resource
stack template, or resource stack instance; to select, ingest,
and/or package desktop applications and server products for
subsequent use by some or all of their end users; create
collections of products (e.g., desktop applications and/or server
products), such as enterprise-wide catalogs, private catalogs, or
portfolios); assign products or collections of products to end
users and/or end user groups (e.g., end users or end user groups
having particular user identities and/or permissions 124); apply
various constraints 136 on the use of the products; and/or set
other configuration parameter values for the products or
collections of products.
[0086] As illustrated in this example and described in more detail
herein, there may be multiple methods for an IT administrator to
add products to catalogs and/or portfolios and make them available
for deployment to end users. For example, system 100 may include a
resource stack template editor 104. In various embodiments, IT
administrators, end users, or third party software providers (e.g.,
independent software vendors) may create resource stack templates
using resource stack template editor 104 for server products that
be uploaded directly to enterprise catalog service platform 108 or
that may (if subsequently published) be discovered and ingested by
the enterprise catalog service through product discovery service
110. System 100 may also include a desktop application authoring
and ingestion tooling component 116. In various embodiments, IT
administrators, end users, or third party software providers (e.g.,
independent software vendors) may create desktop applications using
desktop application authoring and ingestion tooling component 116
that may (if subsequently published as a machine image, application
binary, or other executable application package) be discovered and
ingested by the enterprise catalog service through product
discovery service 110. For example, in some embodiments, IT
administrators or end users in a service provider customer
organization may create and upload customer-specific desktop
applications (e.g., line-of-business applications) through desktop
application authoring and ingestion tooling component 116.
[0087] In some embodiments, product discovery service 110 may
provide an interface through which third party products 112 (e.g.,
server products or desktop applications that have been published
and/or packaged for potential ingestion by the enterprise catalog
service) can be discovered. Product discovery service 110 may
include a product selection and ingestion tooling component 114,
which may be configured to retrieve and/or package products that
are discovered through the product discovery service interface or
that are uploaded through the product selection and ingestion
tooling component 114, in different embodiments. In various
embodiments, the products ingested by the enterprise catalog
service may be leased and/or licensed by the service provider
and/or by service provider customers for the benefit (and use) of
end users in the service provider customer organizations.
[0088] In some embodiments, when a product (e.g., a desktop
application or resource stack template for a server product) is
selected by an IT administrator 102 and ingested by enterprise
catalog service, it may be placed in a default catalog for the
customer organization (such as enterprise catalog 118). The IT
administrator 102 may then add it to one or more private catalogs
122 or portfolios 120, or may assign it directly to one or more
user end users or end user groups having particular user identities
and/or permissions 124. Similarly, when a server product instance
is created (e.g., when a resource stack is constructed according to
a resource stack template), it may be placed in the default
catalog. The IT administrator 102 may then add it to one or more
private catalogs 122 or portfolios 120, or may assign it directly
to one or more end users or end user groups having particular user
identities and/or permissions 124. Note that any constraints 136,
groups of constraints, or configuration parameters that are
selected for various products by the IT administrator (e.g., during
their creation, ingestion, or addition to a particular catalog) may
be applied to the products when they are added to other catalogs
and/or portfolios. In some embodiments, these constraints, groups
of constraints, or configuration parameters may be modified when
they are added to other catalogs and/or portfolios, and/or
additional constraints, groups of constraints, or configuration
parameters may be applied to the products when they are added to
other catalogs and/or portfolios to further restrict access to
those products by end users or to further restrict the use of those
products by end users who are authorized to access them.
[0089] As described in more detail herein, the products that are
managed on behalf of service customer organizations by the
enterprise catalog service implemented by system 100 (and, more
specifically, by enterprise catalog system platform 108) may be
deployed to end users through other components and services
implemented by the service provider (e.g., on physical and virtual
computing resources that are located and/or hosted on the service
provider's network). For example, desktop applications may be
deployed to desktops on various end users' physical devices and/or
on virtual desktop instances (e.g., in response to requests from
the end users to install, subscribe to or launch them) through
desktop application fulfillment platform 126. In another example,
server product instances may be constructed from resource stack
templates (e.g., in response to requests from end users or IT
administrators to deploy the services provided by the resource
stacks) by resource stack management service 132.
[0090] In various embodiments, the end users of a service provider
customer (shown as enterprise end users 134 in FIG. 1) may access
products (e.g., desktop applications and/or services) through
various client applications (e.g., end user consoles). For example,
FIG. 1 illustrates an embodiment in which enterprise end users 134
access desktop applications (including those that are managed on
behalf of their organizations by the enterprise catalog service)
through a desktop application management module 128, and in which
end users 134 access server products (including those that are
managed on behalf of their organizations by the enterprise catalog
service) through a resource stack management service console 130.
For example, end users 134 may log into desktop application
management module 128 in order to request delivery of, to subscribe
to, to unsubscribe from, to install, to uninstall, to launch, or to
otherwise manage a particular desktop application (one that may or
may not be included in a catalog to which the end user currently
has access), or may log into resource stack management service
console 130 in order to construct a resource stack instance from a
resource stack template (on service provider resources), or request
access to a service provided by a resource stack instance that has
been constructed (on service provider resources) from a
corresponding resource stack template (a service that the end user
may or may not currently be authorized to launch). In some
embodiments, when requests are received from end users 134 for
desktop applications or services that are managed by the enterprise
catalog service, they may initiate various workflows of enterprise
catalog service platform 108, desktop application fulfillment
platform 126 and/or resource stack management service 132 that may
or may not result in the end users 134 receiving the requested
product access (e.g., depending on various access management
policies, constraints, or permissions that apply to the product
and/or the end users).
[0091] Note that while the example system illustrated in FIG. 1
includes a single service provider management console 106 through
which IT administrators 106 interact with the enterprise catalog
service platform to perform all IT administrator functions and
includes multiple end user consoles (e.g., one for end user
functions directed to desktop application management and another
for end user function directed to server product management), in
other embodiments, a system that implements an enterprise catalog
service may include two different management consoles (e.g., one
through which desktop applications are managed by IT administrators
and another through which server products are managed by IT
administrators), rather than a single management console. In still
other embodiments, the system may include a single end-user console
through which end users manage both desktop applications and server
products, rather than two different end-user consoles. In still
other embodiments, a system that includes an enterprise catalog
service platform, such as that described herein, may be configured
to manage and deploy software products other than
resource-stack-based server products and desktop applications,
and/or may deploy software products for consumption by end users
through more, fewer, or different deployment platforms than those
illustrated in FIG. 1 as desktop application fulfillment platform
126 and resource stack management service 132. Similarly, in other
embodiments, a system that includes an enterprise catalog service
platform, such as that described herein, may be configured to
ingest software products of types other than resource-stack-based
server products and/or desktop applications, and/or may include (or
interact with) more, fewer, or different ingestion mechanisms than
those illustrated in FIG. 1 as resource stack template editor 104,
product discovery service 110, and desktop authoring and ingestion
tooling 116.
[0092] Although not shown in the example in FIG. 1, the enterprise
catalog service may include an interface to (or otherwise work in
conjunction with) various data stores or data storage services
(e.g., a data storage service implemented by the service provider
or an external data storage service). In one embodiment, the
documents associated with a product may be stored in an object
storage service, and the console (or customer) may be responsible
for uploading these documents to system-defined locations through
various enterprise catalog service APIs. In this example, the
service catalog runtime may pass the location of the documents to
the catalog service, and the identity and access management (IAM)
role used to upload the documents may be stored by the catalog
service. In some embodiments, data about running stacks may be
persisted in a database service. In various embodiments,
application state data for virtualized desktop applications may be
persisted in either an object storage service or a database
service.
[0093] The systems and methods described herein may be implemented
on or by one or more computing systems within a network
environment, in different embodiments. An example computer system
on which embodiments of the techniques described herein for
managing and deploying desktop applications and services through an
enterprise catalog service may be implemented is illustrated in
FIG. 16. Embodiments of various systems and methods for
implementing these techniques are generally described herein in the
context of a service provider that provides to clients, via an
intermediate network such as the Internet, virtualized resources
(e.g., virtualized computing and storage resources), software
products, and computing services (including desktop applications
and server products) implemented on a provider network of the
service provider. FIGS. 1, 2, 4, 5, and 16 (and the corresponding
descriptions thereof) illustrate and describe example computing
systems and environments in which embodiments of the systems and
methods described herein may be implemented, and are not intended
to be limiting. In at least some embodiments, at least some of the
resources provided to clients of the service provider via the
provider network may be virtualized computing resources implemented
on multi-tenant hardware that is shared with other client(s) and/or
on hardware dedicated to the particular client. Each virtualized
computing resource may be referred to as a resource instance.
Resource instances may, for example, be rented or leased to clients
of the service provider. For example, clients of the service
provider may access one or more services of the provider network
via application programming interfaces (APIs) to the services to
obtain and configure resource instances and to establish and manage
virtual network configurations that include the resource instances,
for example virtualized private networks.
[0094] In some embodiments, the resource instances may, for
example, be implemented according to hardware virtualization
technology that enables multiple operating systems to run
concurrently on a host computer, i.e. as virtual machines (VMs) on
the hosts. A hypervisor, or virtual machine monitor (VMM), on a
host may present the VMs on the host with a virtual platform and
monitors the execution of the VMs. Each VM may be provided with one
or more private IP addresses; the VMM on a host may be aware of the
private IP addresses of the VMs on the host.
Example Provider Network Environment
[0095] This section describes an example provider network
environment in which embodiments of the methods described herein
may be implemented. However, this example provider network
environment is not intended to be limiting. In various embodiments,
in such provider network environments, a service provider may host
virtualized resource instances on behalf of a customer that can be
accessed by end users. For example, end users who are associated
with the customer on whose behalf the virtualized resources
instances are hosted (e.g., members of the same organization or
enterprise) may be able to access the virtualized resources
instances using client applications on client devices. In some
embodiments, the virtualized resources instances may be configured
to implement virtual desktop instances.
[0096] In some embodiments, desktop applications that are included
in catalogs managed by an enterprise catalog service such as those
described herein may be delivered to and/or deployed, installed or
executed on virtualized computing resources (e.g., virtual
computing resource instances implemented on service provider
hardware in a cloud computing environment), rather than on physical
client computing devices. In addition, server products that are
included in catalogs managed by an enterprise catalog service may
be implemented as resource stacks (e.g., stacks of service provider
resources) that collectively provide a service. These service
provider resources may also include virtualized computing
resources, such a virtual computing node instances implemented on
service provider hardware in a cloud computing environment. An
example service provider network that provides virtualized
computing resources for these and other uses is illustrated in FIG.
2 and described below.
[0097] FIG. 2 is a block diagram of an example provider network
environment, one that provides a storage virtualization service and
a hardware virtualization service to clients, according to at least
some embodiments. In this example, hardware virtualization service
220 provides multiple computation resources 224 (e.g., VMs) to
clients. The computation resources 224 may, for example, be rented
or leased to clients of the provider network 200 (e.g., to a client
that implements client network 250). As noted in the previous
example, in some embodiments, provider network 200 may also provide
application virtualization for the benefit of its customers and
their end users (e.g., through a packaging service), and may
provide on-demand delivery of desktop applications to desktops on
physical computing devices and/or virtual desktops through an
application fulfillment platform implemented using various
resources of service provider network 200. In this example, each
computation resource 224 may be provided with one or more private
IP addresses. Provider network 200 may be configured to route
packets from the private IP addresses of the computation resources
224 to public Internet destinations, and from public Internet
sources to the computation resources 224.
[0098] Provider network 200 may provide a client network 250, for
example coupled to intermediate network 240 via local network 256,
the ability to implement virtual computing systems 292 via hardware
virtualization service 220 coupled to intermediate network 240 and
to provider network 200. In some embodiments, hardware
virtualization service 220 may provide one or more APIs 202, for
example a web services interface, via which a client network 250
may access functionality provided by the hardware virtualization
service 220, for example via a console 294. In at least some
embodiments, at the provider network 200, each virtual computing
system 292 at client network 250 may correspond to a computation
resource 224 that is leased, rented, or otherwise provided to
client network 250.
[0099] From an instance of a virtual computing system 292 and/or
another client device 290 or console 294, the client may access the
functionality of storage virtualization service 210, for example
via one or more APIs 202, to access data from and store data to a
virtual data store 216 provided by the provider network 200. In
some embodiments, a virtualized data store gateway (not shown) may
be provided at the client network 250 that may locally cache at
least some data, for example frequently accessed or critical data,
and that may communicate with virtualized data store service 210
via one or more communications channels to upload new or modified
data from a local cache so that the primary store of data
(virtualized data store 216) is maintained. In at least some
embodiments, a user, via a virtual computing system 292 and/or on
another client device 290, may mount and access one or more storage
volumes 218 of virtual data store 216, each of which appears to the
user as local virtualized storage 298.
[0100] While not shown in FIG. 2, the virtualization service(s) may
also be accessed from resource instances within the provider
network 200 via API(s) 202. For example, a client, appliance
service provider, or other entity may access a virtualization
service from within a respective private network on the provider
network 200 via an API 202 to request allocation of one or more
resource instances within the private network or within another
private network. Note that in some embodiments, the hardware
virtualization service 220 may be configured to provide computation
resources 224 that have been configured to implement a virtual
desktop instance, which may appear to the user as a local desktop
(implemented by a virtual computing system 292). Note also that in
some embodiments, the computation resources 224 that are made
available to the client via hardware virtualization service 220 may
include multiple network interfaces. For example, some of them may
include one network interface for communicating with various
components of client network 250 and another network interface for
communicating with computation resources or other network entities
on another network that is external to provider network 200 (not
shown).
[0101] In some embodiments, a service provider network that
implements VMs and VMMs may use Internet Protocol (IP) tunneling
technology to encapsulate and route client data packets over a
network substrate between client resource instances on different
hosts within the provider network. The provider network may include
a physical network substrate that includes networking devices such
as routers, switches, network address translators (NATs), and so
on, as well as the physical connections among the devices. The
provider network may employ IP tunneling technology to provide an
overlay network via which encapsulated packets (that is, client
packets that have been tagged with overlay network metadata
including but not limited to overlay network address information
for routing over the overlay network) may be passed through the
network substrate via tunnels or overlay network routes. The IP
tunneling technology may provide a mapping and encapsulating system
for creating the overlay network on the network substrate, and may
provide a separate namespace for the overlay network layer (public
IP addresses) and the network substrate layer (private IP
addresses). In at least some embodiments, encapsulated packets in
the overlay network layer may be checked against a mapping
directory to determine what their tunnel substrate target (private
IP address) should be. The IP tunneling technology may provide a
virtual network topology overlaid on the physical network
substrate; the interfaces (e.g., service APIs) that are presented
to clients are attached to the overlay network so that when a
client resource instance provides an IP address to which packets
are to be sent, the IP address is run in virtual space by
communicating with a mapping service that can determine where the
IP overlay addresses are.
[0102] In various embodiments, client resource instances on the
hosts may communicate with other client resource instances on the
same host or on different hosts according to stateful protocols
such as Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and/or according to
stateless protocols such as User Datagram Protocol (UDP). However,
the client packets are encapsulated according to an overlay network
protocol by the sending VMM and unencapsulated by the receiving
VMM. A VMM on a host, upon receiving a client packet (e.g., a TCP
or UDP packet) from a client resource instance on the host and
targeted at an IP address of another client resource instance,
encapsulates or tags the client packet according to an overlay
network (or IP tunneling) protocol and sends the encapsulated
packet onto the overlay network for delivery. The encapsulated
packet may then be routed to another VMM via the overlay network
according to the IP tunneling technology. The other VMM strips the
overlay network encapsulation from the packet and delivers the
client packet (e.g., a TCP or UDP packet) to the appropriate VM on
the host that implements the target client resource instance. In
other words, in some embodiments, although there may be a single
underlying physical network in the service provider computing
environment (e.g., the service provider data center), the
encapsulations described herein may allow it to appear as if each
client application (or each client resource instance on which one
or more client applications execute) is running on its own virtual
network (e.g., data packets for multiple client applications may be
traveling on the same physical network but it may appear as if the
traffic directed to each of the client applications is traveling on
a private network).
[0103] In some embodiments, the overlay network may be a stateless
network implemented according to a connectionless (or stateless) IP
protocol. In some such embodiments, the sending VMM sends the
encapsulated packet onto the overlay network for routing and
delivery, but does not receive an acknowledgement (ACK) or other
response regarding delivery of the packet. In other embodiments,
the VMM may receive an ACK or other response regarding delivery of
an encapsulated packet.
[0104] In some embodiments, while there are physical computers
executing client applications and other processes described herein,
the client applications may be running as virtual machines on the
physical computers. For example, internal processes of the cloud
computing environment that are configured to manage the creation of
these virtual machines, to provision resources for these virtual
machines, and/or to perform other administrative tasks on behalf of
clients and/or their applications (e.g., monitoring resource usage,
customer accounting, billing for services, etc.) may execute in a
control plane layer (or hypervisor) in the cloud computing
environment. By contrast, client applications (e.g., each resource
instance that implements an application component) may execute in a
data plane layer of the cloud computing environment. Underneath
these layers, there may be only one physical network card for each
host node (or for multiple host nodes), in some embodiments, but
each resource instance may execute as if it has its own network
(e.g., a virtual network). In some embodiments, each resource
instance may have its own data plane network connection(s), but may
make local API calls (e.g., calls to a component on the same node)
without needing to rely on these data plane network
connections.
[0105] In some embodiments, the cloud computing environment may be
a multi-tenant environment in which each application (and/or each
virtual private network) may have its own namespace. In some
embodiments, each client may have its own allocation of network
connectivity and/or throughput capacity (bandwidth). For example,
the network connectivity and/or throughput capacity in the data
plane network may be provisioned (e.g., designated or reserved) for
the use of various clients. In various embodiments, a service
provider may employ one of the example provider networks described
above (or another suitable provider network environment) to
implement a hosted desktop service in a cloud computing
environment. In such embodiments, a customer may access the
provider network in the cloud computing environment to request the
instantiation and/or configuration of one or more virtual desktop
instances in the cloud, and may then provide access to those
virtual desktop instances to one or more end users (e.g., through a
client application). For example, an administrator within an
organization or enterprise may set up an account with a service
provider, may contract with the service provider to set up some
number of virtual desktop instances, and (once the virtual desktop
instances are set up), may provide credentials for accessing these
virtual desktop instances. In this example, once the virtual
desktop instances have been set up and credentials have been
provided, one or more end users may launch a client application on
their a client device (e.g., a computer, tablet device, or other
mobile device) and enter the credentials for the virtual desktop
instance, after which they may be logged into a virtual desktop
environment. Although the virtual desktop environment is
implemented by virtualized resource instances in the cloud
computing environment, it may appear to the end user as if it were
a local desktop and it may operate as if it were an independent
computer to which the user is connected. In some embodiments, the
virtual desktop environment may provide access to productivity
software and other software programs to which the user would
typically have access if the user were logged onto a physical
computer owned by the organization or enterprise. In at least some
embodiments, an application fulfillment platform of the service
provider may be configured to provide on-demand delivery of
applications (e.g., as virtualized application packages) to virtual
desktop instances, as described herein. Note that these
applications may or may not be stand-alone applications. For
example, in some cases, each of the virtual desktop instances
(and/or the applications running thereon) may be part of the active
directory framework of the organization or enterprise and may be
able to access shared files or other resources on the existing
network of the organization or enterprise once the credential
presented by the user upon logging into the virtual desktop
instance have been authenticated.
[0106] In some embodiments, the types of interactions experienced
by different users that access the enterprise catalog services (and
enterprise catalog service platforms) described herein may be
thought of as being divided into multiple phases, where each phase
may include tasks that are performed by an IT administrator of a
service provider customer organization and/or tasks that are
performed by an end user in the customer organization. For example,
FIG. 3 illustrates tasks that may be performed by an IT
administrator (shown as IT administrator tasks 300) and other tasks
that may be performed by an end user (shown as end user tasks 330),
according to at least some embodiments. As illustrated in this
example, during a product authoring and discovery phase (shown as
authoring and discovery phase 302), an IT administrator may create
the artifacts for a product to be offered by the enterprise catalog
service using appropriate product-specific tools (shown as task
312). In various embodiments, this task may include creating a
machine image for a software product, creating a resource stack
template for a server product, or packaging a desktop application
for delivery to desktops on physical computing devices and/or
virtual desktop instances. During this phase, the IT administrator
may also discover one or more products that are available to be
managed by the enterprise catalog service on behalf of the IT
administrator's organization, and may subscribe to one or more of
those products on behalf of the end users in the IT administrator's
organization, and may subscribe to one or more of those products on
behalf of the end users in the IT administrator's organization
(shown as task 319). In various embodiments, during this phase (or
during an ingestion phase described below), an IT administrator may
(through an administrator or management console of the enterprise
catalog service) be able to add additional information for a
product listing (e.g., a product listing for a newly authored
product or for one that was discovered by the IT administrator),
such as a detailed product description, a logo to brand the
product, version information and/or tags (which may be used to
identify and characterize the product, or may be used in identity
and access management policies to allow or deny access to the
product or to restrict the operations that can be performed by IAM
users, groups, and roles).
[0107] As illustrated in FIG. 3, during an ingestion phase (shown
as ingestion phase 304), and administrator may upload a product
artifact that was created during authoring phase 302. For example,
the IT administrator may upload a machine image for a software
product, a resource stack template for a server product, or a
packaged desktop application to the enterprise catalog service
platform (shown as task 314) and publish the machine image,
resource stack or packaged desktop application to one or more
enterprise catalogs, private catalogs or portfolios (as in task
315). During a portfolio management phase (shown as portfolio
management phase 305), the IT administrator may create one or more
portfolios (shown as task 316) and may add one or more products
that were authored, uploaded, and published by the IT administrator
(as in tasks 312, 314, and 315) or that were discovered and
subscribed to by the IT administrator (as in task 319) to those
portfolios (shown as task 321). During this phase, the IT
administrator may also define one or more access management
policies and/or constraints to be applied to the product and/or to
the portfolios to which the products have been added (as in task
317). For example, in some embodiments, the constraints may include
business level input parameters (such as an input parameter
specifying the number of users to support or whether certain types
of data need to be stored), or may include infrastructure-level
input parameters (such as an input parameter specifying the type of
virtualized computing resource instance should be used).
[0108] As illustrated in this example, during a user discovery
phase (shown as user discovery phase 306), an end user within the
customer organization may discover one or more products by
searching an enterprise-wide catalogs (if the end user has
permission to view the enterprise-wide catalog) or their own
private catalog (e.g., a logical collection of the products that
the end user has permission to discover and/or launch, including
any products that are included in portfolios to which the end user
has been granted access), and viewing details pages that provide
information about the products (as in task 332) and may request
access to one or more products (as in task 334). During a
fulfillment phase (shown as fulfillment phase 308), the end user
may launch one or more of the products in their private catalog (as
in task 336) and begin monitoring their state (which may include
real-time monitoring of the health of the product and/or tracking
costs associated with the provisioning and use of the product (as
in task 340). Note that, in some embodiments, IT administrators
and/or other decision makers may be required to approve a request
to discover or launch a product prior to the end user being allowed
to discover and/or launch the requested product. In this phase, the
IT administrator may also begin monitoring the state of various
products that have been provisioned by (or on behalf of) end users
in the customer organization (which may include real-time
monitoring the health of the products provided to the end users
and/or tracking costs associated with the provisioning and use of
the products provided to the end user), as in task 322. For
example, in some embodiments, an IT administrator and/or an end
user may be able to view a list of products that are currently in
use along with their health (e.g., through the
administrator/management console or through an end user console).
In some embodiments, the product health for a server products built
using a resource stack template may be determined according to
various alarms that are defined in the template.
[0109] As illustrated in FIG. 3, during an on-going management
phase (shown as on-going management phase 310), both end users and
IT administrators may continue to monitor the health of various
products and to track costs associated with the provisioning and
use of the products (as in tasks 322 and 340). The IT
administrators may also manage those products, as well as any
portfolios in which they are contained and/or any constraints or
users/permissions that are associated with those products (as in
task 318). For example, in some embodiments, managing the products
may include enforcing any access management policies and/or
constraints that were defined for the products and/or to the
enterprise catalogs, private catalogs or portfolios to which the
products were published. During this phase, end users may manage
their own list of products (as in 338). For example, end users may
add or remove products, but may not modify their configurations
(e.g., any applicable constraints or permissions). Also note that,
in some embodiments, the IT administrator may continue to search
for and discover new products, to subscribe to them, and to add
them to new or existing portfolios and that the end user may
continue to discover and request access to products and/or to
launch products to which the end user has been granted access
(e.g., by repeating various ones of the tasks illustrated in FIG.
3) during the ongoing management phase 310 (not shown).
[0110] Note that in some embodiments, a product (or a particular
version of a product) may be deprecated by an IT administrator
(e.g., through the administrator/management console of the
enterprise catalog service). In such embodiments, when a particular
version of a product is deprecated, which may also be referred to
as "sunsetting", a notification may be sent to all end users that
have previously provisioned that version of the product. In some
embodiments, end users who previously provisioned (and are
currently using) a product version that has been (or is about to
be) sunsetted may continue to use that product version unless, for
example, an IT administrator determines that it is a security risk
and revokes access to that product version for all end users.
However, a product version that has been (or is about to be)
sunsetted may not be available to any other end users (e.g., end
users who have not previously provisioned that product and/or are
not currently using it). In some embodiments, once an end user
stops using a product version that has been (or is about to be)
sunsetted, the end user may no longer have access to that product
version. Note also that new product versions may be created in the
same way that new products are created (e.g., through the
administrator/management console of the enterprise catalog
service). In some embodiments, when a new version of a product is
published to a catalog or portfolio, a notification may be sent to
all users that have provisioned previous versions of the product.
Creating a new version of a product may not affect any existing
versions of the product that are currently in use.
[0111] One embodiment of a service provider system that is
configured to provide on-demand delivery of applications (e.g.,
desktop applications) to computing resource instances of its
customers' end users is illustrated by the block diagram in FIG. 4.
As illustrated in this example, the system, implemented on service
provider network 430, may include an application fulfillment
platform (shown as desktop application fulfillment platform 420).
The application fulfillment platform may include an interface
mechanism (shown as service provider system console 422) through
which an IT administrator of a service provider customer (e.g., a
business, enterprise, or organization that receives computing
services, storage services, and/or access to second or third party
applications from the service provider) can manage the fulfillment
of various applications to their end users (e.g., employees or
members of the same business, enterprise, or organization). For
example, the IT administrator may log into desktop application
fulfillment platform 420 (e.g., through a browser or a dedicated
client-side application) to access service provider system console
422. The IT administrator may then provide input (e.g., requests
for service entered in a graphical user interface of service
provider system console 422) in order to create a catalog of
applications to be provisioned for the use of their end users, to
assign applications to particular end users or user groups, or to
generate, obtain, or view usage reports for the applications in the
catalog by their end users.
[0112] As illustrated in this example, desktop application
fulfillment platform 420 may include multiple fulfillment platform
control plane services 426, various ones of which may be invoked in
response to the inputs received from the IT administrator. For
example, in response to inputs specifying the addition of an
application to a catalog and the assigning of the application to
one or more users, a "create fulfillment" workflow may be
initiated, which may include operations performed by a fulfillment
service, an entitlement service, a delivery service, a packaging
service, a device identifier service, and/or a proxy service. As
illustrated at 424, in this example, applications may be delivered
to end users as application binaries (e.g., desktop applications
that have been prepared for physical installation on an end user's
computing resource instance) and/or as virtualized application
packages. For example, in some embodiments, the service provider
may (e.g., when ingesting desktop applications for the benefit of
its customers and their end users) transform desktop applications
into virtualized application packages to be delivered to end users'
computing resource instances, and those virtualized application
packages may be executed on those computing resource instances
without the end user having to install the desktop applications
themselves on those computing resource instances.
[0113] In some embodiments, an application delivery agent (such as
desktop application delivery agent 436 illustrated in FIG. 4) and a
desktop application management module (such as desktop application
management module 432) may be installed on the end user's computing
resources instance 438. In various embodiments, computing resource
instance 438 may be a physical computing device (e.g., a desktop or
laptop computer, a tablet computing device, or a smart phone) or
may be a virtualized computing resource instance (e.g., one that
implements a virtual desktop instance). Desktop application
delivery agent 436 (which may be a client component of desktop
application fulfillment platform 420) may be configured to
communicate with various fulfillment platform control place
services 426 in order to fulfill requests to subscribe to, install,
and/or execute applications selected through desktop application
management module 432 or through another user interface mechanism
(e.g., application icon 440 on desktop 434 or a start menu item).
In other words, desktop application management module 432 is an
application that may be installed on the end user's computing
resource instance 438 to allow the end user to interact with
desktop application fulfillment platform 420 through desktop
application delivery agent 436. In some embodiments, desktop
application delivery agent 436 may include a runtime engine
component that is configured to execute the instructions of a
virtualized application package 424 that is delivered (e.g., using
demand paging) for a selected application. The functionality of an
application delivery agent is described in more detail below,
according to at least some embodiments.
[0114] As illustrated in FIG. 4, the service provider network may
include physical and/or virtualized computing resource instances
(e.g., computation resource instances and/or storage resource
instances) that may be provisioned on behalf of the business,
enterprise, or organization (and its end users). In some
embodiments, these computing resources instances (shown as
computing resource instances 428 on service provider network 430)
may be configured to implement a remote computing application that
allows end users to access applications executing on computing
resource instances 428 as if they were installed and executing
locally on their machine. For example, in some embodiments, one or
more of these computing resources instances 428 may be configured
to implement a virtual desktop instance (which may serve as the end
user's computing resource instance 438) on which a desktop
application delivery agent 436 and a desktop application management
module 432 are installed. In such embodiments, desktop 434 in FIG.
4 may represent a view presented by the virtual desktop instance
and may appear to the end user as if it were a desktop on the end
user's local (physical) computing device. In some embodiments,
service provider network 430 may also include storage resources
outside of desktop application fulfillment platform 420 (which may
be managed by a storage service implemented within service provider
network 430) that are configured to store data utilized by desktop
application fulfillment platform 420 (not shown). In various
embodiments, application binaries, virtualized application
packages, various tables that store information about applications
and collections thereof, application state data, or other
information used to provide on-demand delivery of desktop
applications to end users may be stored outside of desktop
application fulfillment platform 420 instead of, or in addition to,
within desktop application fulfillment platform 420.
[0115] As illustrated in this example, desktop application
management module 432 (through which the end user may select
applications for installation or execution) may execute on the end
user's computing resource instance 438, and a graphical user
interface of desktop application management module 432 may be
displayed on desktop 434. For example, this interface may present a
list of applications for selection by the end user (e.g., in order
to subscribe to, install, and/or execute an application). In
addition, a shortcut or icon for an application (shown as element
440 in FIG. 4) may be displayed on desktop 434 and may be selected
in order to launch the corresponding application (e.g., desktop
application management module 432, or one of the applications
delivered for execution on computing resource instance 438 in
response to its selection, by the end user, within desktop
application management module 432).
[0116] As described above, in some embodiments, an enterprise
catalog service may operate in conjunction with (or may provide an
interface to) a resource stack management service (such as resource
stack management service 132 illustrated in FIG. 1). This service
may help service provider customers (e.g., administrators and/or
end users) model and set up service provider resources on which
server products may run within the service provider network.
Through a resource stack management service console (such as
resource stack management service console 130), administrators may
create a resource stack template that describes all of the service
provider resources required for a particular tasks or server
product (such as virtualized computing resource instances and/or
database instances). Once the resource stack template is created,
the resource stack management service may take care of provisioning
and configuring those resources for the customer. Other resources
that may be defined in a resource stack template include an
auto-scaling component, a load balancer, or an additional storage
service instance. Once a resource stack is no longer needed, it may
be deleted, which deletes all the resources in the stack. In
addition, a resource stack template may be modified by editing the
definition or by creating a new version of the template that
includes a different definition. For example, a resource stack
template may be modified in order to include a higher performing
computing resource instance type or to add additional storage
resources.
[0117] As previously noted, an enterprise catalog service may
operate in conjunction with (or provide an interface to) a
resources stack template tool that may be accessed by an IT
administrator or end user in a customer organization (e.g., through
an administrator/management console or through an end user console
such as resource stack management service console 130) to create a
collection of interdependent resources that form a resource stack.
The resource stack management service, enterprise catalog service,
or another service provider service or platform may maintain and
manage a catalog of resources that can be included in a resource
stack.
[0118] In one embodiment, an IT administrator or end user in a
customer organization may create, select or otherwise specify a
template that defines a resource stack. The resource stack may
comprise resources available from the service provider. The
resource stack template may also include information about how the
resources are to be linked together in the resource stack and how
the resources are to be configured. When a resource stack is
created, it may be created in accordance with the information
contained in the resource stack template. For example, creating a
server product from a resource stack template may include
determining the dependencies between the resources and an order in
which the resources should be instantiated (e.g., provisioned using
service provider resources), dependent on the resource stack
template. After successful provisioning and integration of the
resources, the resource stack may be enabled for use.
[0119] In one example, at a newspaper company, in order to enable
all of the reporters to have their own blogs, an IT administrator
may make them all end users under the organization's service
provider account. The IT administrator may access the enterprise
catalog service (e.g., through an administrator/management
console), through which the IT administrator may subscribe to a
blog publishing package (server product), create a catalog or
portfolio, add the blog publishing package to the
catalog/portfolio, and then grant access to the blog publishing
package to each of the end users (reporters). In this example, when
the end users (reporters) access the catalog/portfolio (e.g.,
through the end user console), they would see the blog publishing
package as an application that they can deploy. For example, an end
user may select the blog publishing package (e.g., as an icon or
shortcut), in response to which the resource stack management
service may deploy the machine image for the blog publishing
package (which may also include a database instance or other
storage resource instance in addition to a computing resource
instance). Once the blog publishing package has been deployed, the
end user may begin using it to create their own blogs (blogs over
which they have control). In some embodiments, the IT administrator
may constrain the use of the blog publishing package, e.g., only
allowing development on a computing resource instance of a certain
size (e.g., a small instance with limited computing power), rather
than on a larger computing resource instance (even if those are
available to the newspaper company through their service agreement
with the service provider). In another example, the IT
administrator may be able to limit the amount of storage that each
end user can consume (e.g., 10 Gb per end user).
[0120] In this example, for every blog that is launched by one of
the end users (reporters), the enterprise catalog system may
generate billing information for the IT administrator. For example,
the IT administrator may be billed monthly for whatever number of
blogs were launched during that month and for the use of the
underlying service provider resources (e.g., computing resource
instances and storage resource instances). In some embodiments, the
service provider may collect usage fees from the customer
organization and then pass along payments to any third party
vendors from whom an application or server product was sourced. For
example, in one embodiment, the service provider may keep fees
associated with the hardware resources and/or virtualized computing
resource instances on which the server product (e.g., a resource
stack application) runs (i.e., fees for the use of the service
provider's infrastructure), and a percentage of the fees associate
with the application, passing the bulk of the fees collected for
use of the server product (e.g., by one or more organizations and
their end users) to the appropriate third party vendor(s), e.g.,
monthly or on any other suitable billing schedule. Note that, in
some embodiments of the systems and services described herein, for
software products sourced by third party vendors, there may be
flexibility in the way that any applicable taxes on the software
products or services are collected and paid (e.g., allowing
collection by the service provider and/or payment to the
appropriate taxing authority by the third party vendor, the IT
administrator, or the service provider). There may also be some
flexibility in which entity gets to set the prices charged to the
customer for software products that are sourced by third party
vendors (e.g., the service provider or third party vendor), with
options for the service provider to bundle multiple software
products together from different vendors and offer them to
customers with discounted pricing.
[0121] In some embodiments, in order for the enterprise catalog
service (or an underlying enterprise catalog service platform) to
manage the ingestion, configuration, deployment, and on-going
management of different types of software products (which are
sourced from different independent software vendors or other
entities) for end users who consume them on a variety of deployment
platforms, the enterprise catalog service may maintain metadata of
several different types for each of the software products that are
available for deployment through the service, and the types of
metadata maintained for the software products may vary by product
type, by target system, or by source (e.g., by vendor). For
example, for each of the software products, the enterprise catalog
service may be configured to store (and subsequently use, e.g., for
display purposes, for deployment purposes, or for determining
pricing) the same combination of metadata elements or a different
combination of metadata elements, which may include metadata
elements reflecting any or all of the following types of
information: offer information, a license type, subscription or
licensing terms, a product format, resource requirements, an
indication of the vendor or other sourcing entity, entitlement
information, information indicating any constraints that are
associated with a product, portfolio, or user, access management
information, or information indicating one or more portfolios in
which the product is included. In some embodiments, the metadata
maintained for each of the software products may be dependent on
the source of the product or on other characteristics of the
product. For example, offer information (which may include a
pricing type, a price, and/or taxing information for a specified
product) may be maintained for products obtained from third party
vendors, but not for the customer organization's own
line-of-business products. In some embodiments, the metadata may
include multiple offers for similar products from different
sources, or one more than one offer for a single product, but not
all of the offers may be discoverable by administrators or end
users. In some embodiments, the metadata maintained for each of the
software products may be filtered or sorted so that only products
that an administrator or end user has permission to view/discover
are presented and/or only a particular subset of the metadata
maintained for those products is presented. For example, the
enterprise catalog service may be configured to present only the
technical details or business information that an administrator or
end user needs to know and/or has permission to view. In one
example, there may be three different offers for a particular
software product: a three day free trial offer, a regular offer,
and a volume discount offer, but the information that is presented
to an administrator or end user may be sorted or filtered so that
only the offers that the administrator or end user is eligible to
receive can be viewed by the administrator or end user. In some
embodiments, the enterprise catalog service may be configured to
filter or sort the metadata that is maintained for various software
products in order to present similar information to an
administrator or end user (e.g., for use in comparing the
products), even if the metadata maintained for the products is not
of exactly the same type or format.
[0122] In some embodiments, the enterprise catalog service may be
configured to take specific actions in response to changes to the
specific metadata elements that are maintained for a particular
software product. For example, if an offer for a software product
changes, the service may be configured to apply the change
immediately or after a delay, depending on the change. In this
example, if the price goes down (e.g., if a new offer is available
for the product that includes a lower price), the service may
modify the offer that is received by an existing customer right
away (or at the end of the next billing cycle). However, if the
price goes up (e.g., if a current offer for the product is replaced
by an offer in which the price is higher), the service may allow an
existing customer to use the current offer for some period of time
(e.g., 90 days) before notifying the customer of the change and/or
modifying the offer through which the customer receives the
product. In some embodiments, in addition to maintaining (and
acting upon) different types of metadata for different software
products, the enterprise catalog service may be configured to apply
different packaging and/or software integration processes or
mechanisms when ingesting or deploying products of different types
or from different sources, which may include translating or
otherwise transforming the products (or the product packages in
which they are delivered) into a format that is suitable for
ingestion by the enterprise catalog service from different vendors
or for deployment to different or end user systems (e.g., systems
that employ different hardware resources or operating systems).
[0123] FIG. 5 illustrates the use of a resource stack template to
build and deploy a server product, according to at least some
embodiments. As illustrated in this example, a client of a service
provider system 530 may provide a resource stack template 510 that
defines the resources 514 that will be used to execute a server
application (e.g., a server product) on behalf of an end user of a
service provider customer and a set of metadata 512 for the
resource stack. For example, the resources may include one or more
compute node instance (or other modules) that will be used to
execute the server application, a set of database instances that
will store the data processed by the server, load balancers for
distributing request traffic or other resources, and the metadata
may include configuration files (which may contain the identities
and/or setting for various resources of the resource stack),
connectivity/dependencies, user identity and/or permissions
information, alarms, tags, or other information. In some
embodiments, the resource stack template may be received from an IT
administrator of a service provider customer (e.g., through a
service provider management console such as service provider
management console 106 illustrated in FIG. 1) or from an end user
(e.g., through a resource stack management service console such as
resource stack management service console 130), either of which may
expose a resource stack template authoring tool with which the
resource stack template was created.
[0124] In some embodiments, in response to receiving the resource
stack template 510, the service provider system 530 (or, more
specifically, a resource stack management service 520 that is
implemented on the service provider network) may parse the template
and build the stack of resources 514 that are defined in the
template 510 and that will be used to execute the server
application (shown as resource stack 540). For example, in some
embodiments, the resource stack management service 520 may include
a resource provisioning system that is configured to instantiate
the resources defined in the template 510 to create resource stack
540. In some embodiments, building the resource stack 540 may
include instantiating at least one computing resource instance
(e.g., compute node 542) that will execute the server application
544 and manage its runtime environment, and may include one or more
other stack resources (shown as stack resources 546). The compute
node 542 may be a virtualized computing resource instance that has
a predefined computing capacity and/or memory capacity. In some
embodiments, the compute node 542 may be loaded with an operating
system, configuration files, or other resources that are
pre-installed on the compute node 542 when it is instantiated. In
some embodiments, the computing resource instance may include an
initialization script that will be used to apply the metadata 512
defined in the resource stack template 510 to the compute node 542
and/or application 544 when the application is launched on resource
stack 540 by end user 550 (e.g., through its selection within a GUI
of a resource stack management service console such as resource
stack management service console 130 illustrated in FIG. 1). Note
that, in some embodiments, service provider system 530 may also
include other services that interact with the resource stack (e.g.,
an identity management service or other security/authorization
services).
Administrator Tasks
[0125] As previously noted and described in more detail below, in
order to manage the delivery of software products to end users, an
IT administrator of a business, enterprise, or other organization
may be able to perform a variety of different actions through an
administrator console of an application fulfillment platform (such
as service provider management console 106 in FIG. 1 or service
provider system console 422 in FIG. 4), many of which fall into one
of the following three broad categories: [0126] 1) Building a
catalog for the organization, where the catalog is a collection of
software products that may include any of the following product
types: [0127] the organization's own line-of-business (e.g.,
custom) applications [0128] desktop applications or server products
for which the organization has purchased licenses, including
enterprise-wide licenses (e.g., products that may be included in
the catalog under a "bring your own license" model) [0129] desktop
applications or server products purchased or leased from the
service provider (e.g., products that were developed by the service
provider or that were purchased or leased by the service provider
for the benefit of its customers) [0130] 2) Assigning particular
software products to specific end users and/or user groups in the
same organization [0131] 3) Generating, obtaining, and/or viewing
reports indicating the usage of the software products that are
provided through an application fulfillment platform or resource
stack management service to end users in the same organization
[0132] As noted above, the systems and methods described herein for
implementing an application fulfillment platform may, in various
embodiments, allow large enterprises to create and manage catalogs
(or portfolios) of software applications and computation services,
including server applications that execute in a cloud computing
environment and desktop applications that execute on physical
computing devices, virtualized computing resource instances, and
virtual desktop instances. These systems may allow service provider
customers (e.g., enterprises) to ingest their own line-of-business
applications (e.g., server applications and/or desktop
applications) into the catalogs (or portfolios), through which they
may be made available for use by their end users. In some
embodiments, an IT administrator of a service provider customer may
interact with the service provider system through an administrator
console to assign and provision applications to various end users
and/or to define constraints on the use of those applications. This
may include invoking operations or workflows of a resource stack
management service (in the case of server applications) or an
application fulfillment platform (in the case of desktop
applications to be executed on an end user's physical computing
device or virtual desktop instance).
[0133] In some embodiments, a company that wishes to use one or
more applications for software trials, short-term needs or
low-volume needs may obtain access to those applications through an
"applications on-demand" model that is managed through the
application fulfillment platform (thus, taking advantage of the
more favorable terms that may be received by the service provider
as a higher volume customer of the application vendor). In some
embodiments, the company may obtain access to server products under
a similar "services on-demand" model that is managed through the
resource stack management service.
[0134] As noted above, in some embodiments, desktop applications
(e.g., individual applications and/or collections of applications)
and/or server products may be assigned by an IT administrator to
individual users and/or user groups in an active directory to allow
access to those applications. For example, an active directory of
an enterprise (e.g., a company that is a customer of a service
provider) may sit at the center of its resource management
processes. Resources (e.g., users, computers, printers, or other
corporate resources, each of which may have its own identifier) may
be connected to the active directory, and an IT administrator at
the company may give users access to particular ones of the
resources. In some embodiments, an IT administrator may create a
cloud-based active directory for the enterprise. In other
embodiments, connections may be made from a virtual desktop
instance to an active directory on an enterprise computer
system.
[0135] In some embodiments, the IT administrator may, through an
administrator console (e.g., a service provider system console)
assign particular desktop applications and/or server products to
specified users (and/or user groups) by selecting one or more users
and/or user groups in its active directory from a display of the
active directory (or through another interface into the active
directory). For example, the IT administrator may be able to assign
applications (e.g., one or more desktop applications, such as an
office productivity suite, a data analysis application and/or a
browser application) or server products (such as a website design
package or blog publishing package) to the selected users and/or
user groups (e.g., groups of users that are defined in the active
directory, such as a "development team" or "legal team"). In
another example, an IT administrator may wish to provision a
desktop application (e.g., a word processing application) to user1,
user2, and group1 in an active directory. The actions taken in
order to carry out that fulfillment may depend on the type of
application. In this example, since the application is a desktop
application that is available through an application fulfillment
platform, the IT administrator may (e.g., through an administrator
console) assign the desktop application to user1, user2, and
group1, and fulfilling the intended state for user1, user2, and
group1 may include invoking various workflows of the application
fulfillment platform. In another example, if a server product
(e.g., a server-side application that executes on a pre-defined
stack of a service provider resources on behalf of an end user and
returns a response) is to be provisioned to user1, user2 and
group1, fulfilling the server product may include invoking workflow
of the resource stack management service.
[0136] In some embodiments, the IT administrator may, through an
administrator console (e.g., a service provider system console)
also be able to apply various constraints on the use of selected
desktop applications and/or server products by end users or user
groups to which these products are assigned (either individually,
or collectively), or by all users (or all users within a given
customer organization). For example, in various embodiments, the
constraints that may be applied by the IT administrator may be
broadly categorized as being one of the following four types:
environmental constraints (which may restrict the region in which a
product can be provisioned), input parameter constraints (which may
restrict the set of valid values for input parameters that can be
entered when a software product is provisioned or updated), quotas
(which may allow the administrator to control the number of
concurrent deployments of a given software product) and billing
constraints (which may allow the administrator to control spending
limits on an product by product basis). In some embodiments,
constraints may applied at multiple levels (e.g., per product per
user or user group, per product catalog or portfolio, or at one
level for some catalogs/portfolios or users and at another level
for other catalogs/portfolios or users. For example, when
constraints are applied to a catalog or portfolio, all users who
have access to that portfolio will have same constraints and
permissions on the products in the catalog or portfolio by default,
but there may also be some specific constraints for particular
product/user combinations. For example, one user may have to select
a radio button element of a GUI presented by an end user console in
order to install a particular product. For other users, the product
may automatically appears on their system under an "auto-deploy"
setting selected for the user. In this example, required software
products may be automatically installed by default, while optional
products may be "user initiated". In another example, a product
level constraint may specify that no one customer or user can
install more than 10 copies of a particular product (e.g., because
of the number of licenses the organization has purchased) or may
specify that a particular product must be launched using a
specified computing resource instance type (e.g., regardless of the
user on whose behalf the product is launched).
[0137] In yet another example, the collection of three applications
described above may be assigned to three active directory users,
one of which may represent a user group. In this example,
constraints may be set indicating that user1 should use a
particular version of application1 (e.g., an office productivity
suite) and should not have access to any updated versions of
application); that user2 should use a particular version of
application2 (e.g., a data analysis application) that is compatible
with a particular operating system revision and should not have
access to any updated versions of application2; and that user3
(which may represent a group of active directory users) may have
access to application3 (e.g., a browser application) that should
always be kept current (e.g., with updates applied automatically,
when available).
[0138] As previously noted, an administrator may define rules that
limit the parameter values that a user can enter when they use a
product. These rules define input parameter constraints. Other
constraints may be attached to a catalog or portfolio of software
products, and may apply to all products in the catalog/portfolio or
to individual products within the catalog/portfolio. In some
embodiments, constraints may be associated with IAM users, groups
or roles allowing an IT administrator to restrict the service
provider resources that can be created by specific end users or
groups of users. The constraints that are enforced when
provisioning a product or updating a product that is being used may
be evaluated by combining all of the constraints from the
catalog/portfolio or product, and the intersection of all the
constraints may be enforced (e.g., by a desktop application
fulfillment platform, resource stack management service, or other
product fulfillment or delivery platform) when the user is
provisioning the product. In some embodiments, the most restrictive
set of constraints may be applied when different sets of
constraints have been selected for a given user or software
product. For example, if a product may allow all computing resource
instances to be launched, and a catalog or portfolio that contains
the software product may have a constraint that allows all non-GPU
computing resource instances to be used, but the user has a
constraint that only allows tiny and extra small computing resource
instances to be launched, then the effective constraint used when
that user provisions that product from that portfolio will be the
constraint that only allows tiny and extra small computing resource
instances to be launched. In other embodiments, the least
restrictive combination of rules may be applied when different
constraints or sets of constraints have been selected for a given
user or software product, or the rules defined in different
constraints or sets of constraints may be aggregated according to a
pre-determined function for combining them (e.g., as defined by an
IT administrator).
[0139] As noted above, in some embodiments, the IT administrator
may, through an administrator console (e.g., a service provider
system console) be able to generate, obtain, and/or view reports
indicating the usage of the desktop applications and/or server
products that are provided through the service to their end users.
For example, these reports may indicate how many (and/or which)
users are using each software product, how many (and/or which)
users are using each version (e.g., the latest version or an
outdated version) of a particular software product, the duration
for which each software product is used by one or more users,
and/or other usage information. The information in these reports
may be used by the IT administrator to determine which of several
available licensing models (e.g., on-demand subscriptions/leases
using licenses obtained by the service provider, enterprise
licenses obtained directly from the software vendors but managed by
the service provider, etc.) may be most suitable for the software
being used by their organization.
[0140] As described in detail herein, IT administrators (or other
privileged users) within service customer organizations may create
and populate portfolios, add customer-generated or
customer-licensed software products to those portfolios, assign
software products (or entire portfolios) to particular end users
(or to end users with particular identity and access management
roles), apply constraints on the use of individual software
products (including those that are included in one or more
portfolios), and monitor the usage of software products, all for
the benefit of their organizations and end users. In some
embodiments of the enterprise catalog service platforms and
software product deployment platforms described herein (including
desktop application fulfillment platforms 126 and/or resource stack
management service 132 in FIG. 1), the term "portfolio" refers to a
particular resource type that is supported by these platforms. For
example, a portfolio resource type may be defined as a container
that stores a collection of products (or product listings), usage
policies (e.g., constraints or groups of constraints) that govern
how the products will be consumed (e.g., rules about how they can
be launched and by whom), and permissions. The permissions
associated with a portfolio may dictate which users and/or groups
of users have been granted access to the portfolio and its
contents. In other words, in systems that support this resource
type, the use of portfolios may allow the IT administrators within
a service provider customer organization to specify exactly which
users will have access to a specific set of products or which
permission sets will be required to have access to a specific set
of products.
[0141] In some embodiments, IT administrators may create portfolios
that are specific to a particular type of product or to products
with particular licensing model. For example, a portfolio may be
configured by the IT administrator to contain only server products
(e.g., server products that are defined by, and built from,
resource stack templates) or only desktop applications (such as the
virtualized application packages described herein). In other
embodiments, IT administrators may create portfolios that contain a
mix of offerings (e.g., both server products and desktop
applications). Note that, in some embodiments, a given software
product may be included in more than one portfolio. In such
embodiments, the constraints on the given software product may be
different for the portfolios. In other words, when one user has
access to the software product through a portfolio to which they
have been granted access, the use of the software product by that
user may be constrained in certain ways. However, when another user
has access to the same software product through a different
portfolio (one to which the other user has been granted access),
the use of the software product by the other user may be
constrained in different ways (or according to a different
combination of constraints) than the ways in which its use was
constrained for the first user.
[0142] In some embodiments, an IT administrator may create
portfolios on an enterprise catalog service platform through an
interface presented by a service provider management console (such
as console 106 in FIG. 1). When creating a portfolio, the IT
administrator may specify the name for the portfolio, the owner of
the portfolio (e.g., in embodiments in which the owner does not
default to the creator), a description of the portfolio and/or one
or more tags. In some embodiments, specifying tags for a portfolio
may enable an IT administrator to identify and categorize
portfolios and/or may be used in identity and access management
policies to allow or deny access or to restrict operations that can
be performed by various identity and access management users,
groups, and/or roles. As described in more detail below, portfolios
themselves may be shared with other accounts and may be replicated
across regions and/or IT administrators, in some embodiments.
[0143] As previously noted, in various embodiments, an enterprise
catalog service "user" may represent an identity and access
management role (e.g., a child account of a root account for a
service provider customer or service provider customer
organization) or may be an end user in a customer organization
(e.g., an active directory user), and the enterprise catalog
service may support groups of both of these types of users (e.g.,
active directory groups or identity and access management
groups).
[0144] As previously noted, an IT administrator of a service
provider customer organization may (e.g., during creation or
configuration of a portfolio, when adding a product to an existing
portfolio, or at other times) specify that particular constraints
or sets of constraints (e.g., constraint groups) should be applied
on the use of the product (e.g., by all end users who have been
granted permission access the product), on the use of the product
by end users who access the product through the permissions granted
to them to access a portfolio that contains the product, on a
portfolio itself, on a user associated with a portfolio, and/or on
a specific user that has been granted access a specific portfolio,
according to various embodiments. In some embodiments, all such
constraint information (which is not be confused with any
constraints that are applied to a specific product during its own
creation, such as a constraint on a resource stack template) may be
stored by the enterprise catalog service at the portfolio level. In
other words, the enterprise service catalog may support constraints
that are applied in various combinations mappings between
portfolios, products, and users, under one-to-many and/or
many-to-many scenarios (e.g., constraints that apply to many
products in a portfolio, or that apply to many users who have
permission to access the products in a portfolio). As described in
more detail below, in some embodiments, constraints may be shared
across product versions, portfolios, or service provider customer
accounts.
[0145] One embodiment of a method for creating and applying a
constraint on the use of a software product an enterprise catalog
service is illustrated by the flow diagram in FIG. 6. As
illustrated at 610, in this example, the method may include an IT
administrator of a service provider customer organization defining
a constraint that includes one or more rules for governing the use
of the software products that are provided through an enterprise
catalog service. The method may also include the IT administrator
providing input indicating that the constraint should be applied to
a given software product (e.g., individually or as part of a
portfolio to which the constraint is being added), as in 620.
[0146] As illustrated in this example, in response to a request
from an end user, the method may include launching the given
software product, in accordance with the constraint, as in 630. At
some point later, the method may include the IT administrator
sharing the constraint across product versions, across portfolios,
or across customer accounts, as in 640. Several non-limiting
examples of mechanisms for sharing the constraint are described in
more detail below. Once the constraint has been shared, the method
may include enforcing the shared constraint during a subsequent
launch of the given software product (e.g., by an entity which with
the constraint was shared and one whose behalf it was launched), as
in 650. Note that while FIG. 6 illustrates an example in which a
constraint is applied to a software product launch prior to it
being shared, in some embodiments these are independent activities
that may be performed at any time subsequent to the creation of the
constraint and in any order.
[0147] In various embodiments, if an end user has been granted
access to a portfolio, the end user may (by virtue of this
permission) also have permission to launch the products that are
included in the portfolio, with the launch of the product being
performed in accordance with the portfolio-level, product-specific,
and/or user-specific constraints that have been defined for the
portfolio by its creator/owner and that are included in the
portfolio. In other words, when product is launched, all active
constraints for the product (e.g., limitations on the types or
sizes of the computing resource instances on which it may be
launched, on the regions in which it may be launched, or on the
number of times it may be launched by a user or by all users). As
noted above, in some embodiments, some server products that are
managed through the enterprise catalog service and that are built
according to resource stack templates may be launched in accordance
with any additional constraints that are specified in those
resource stack templates (e.g., constraints that were added by the
IT administrator(s) that created those resource stack templates).
As described herein, in some embodiments, even though end users may
be able access products that are included in particular portfolios
(containers) to which they have been granted access (e.g., to
discover and launch them), the end users may not have any knowledge
of the portfolios to which they have been granted access or even
that such portfolios exist (as a concept) in the enterprise catalog
service platform.
[0148] In various embodiments, an enterprise catalog service
platform may support portfolios, where a portfolio acts as a
container for software products, as described herein. At any given
time, a portfolio may have zero or more products in it, and a
software product may be in multiple portfolios. As described above,
administrators may create portfolios, add products to them, and,
using identity and access management (IAM) permissions, publish
portfolios to make them visible to users. In some embodiments, the
portfolios that are created in a particular customer account may be
visible to all IAM users in the account. Typically, an IT
administrator of a customer organization may create multiple
portfolios, each of which may include different products and access
permissions that are customized for specific types of end users.
For example, a portfolio for a development team will likely contain
different products than a portfolio that is created for a sales and
marketing team. As noted above, a single product may be published
to multiple portfolios, and may have different access permissions
and/or usage constraints in each of the portfolios.
[0149] In various embodiments, end users may have access to any
number of portfolios, as specified by their IT administrators. By
default, a user with access to a portfolio may have access to all
of the products that it contains. In some embodiments, portfolios
can be shared with users in one or more other service provider
accounts. For example, a central IT administrator for a customer
organization who wished to have control over all of the software
products used in the organization may create one or more portfolios
and share some or all of them with subordinate IT administrators
(e.g., in different regions or sub-organizations). When a portfolio
is shared with another account, the portfolio creator/owner may
retain ownership and control of the portfolio and only the
portfolio creator/owner can make changes to that portfolio (e.g.,
adding new products or updating products with new versions). In
some embodiments, a portfolio may also be "unshared" at any time.
In such embodiments, any products currently in use may continue to
run, but may not be accessible once they have finished running. In
some embodiments, to share a portfolio with another customer
account, the portfolio creator/owner may (e.g., directly or through
a service provider management console) send a "share my portfolio"
request to the user account with which the portfolio is to be
shared. The owner of that account (i.e., the recipient of the
sharing request) may approve the sharing request and respond with
an IAM role that the portfolio creator/owner can use to grant
permissions for the portfolio to the recipient account. In other
words, in some embodiments, the portfolio creator/owner may use IAM
roles to control access to portfolios and the products contained in
those portfolios.
[0150] In some embodiments, each portfolio and each product within
a portfolio may have a unique resource identifier (e.g., a
"portfolio key"), which may be used to enables\access control
through various IAM policies. For example, an IT administrator may
create IAM policies that grant or deny permission to IAM users,
groups, or roles for creating and managing portfolios, provisioning
products from a portfolio, or updating or deleting products that
have been provisioned. In various embodiments, IAM policies may be
applied to portfolios, products, computing resource instances
(e.g., virtualized computing resource instances) and resource
stacks, as well as to individual IAM users, groups, or roles. By
using a unique resource identifier ("portfolio key") and one or
more tags, the IT administrator may be able to limit access and/or
control the operations that can be performed on individual
resources or on sets of portfolios, products, computing resource
instances, or stacks. In some embodiments, only IT administrators
or other privileged users (principals), such as those with root
permissions, can create and edit portfolios, add products to
portfolios, and set permissions and constraints for a portfolio
and/or the products they contain. In general, the root account that
creates a portfolio has access to the portfolio, but none of the
users within that IAM account or across IAM accounts may have
access to the portfolio until or unless they are explicitly granted
access to that object by the root account (e.g., the creator/owner
of the object).
[0151] In various embodiments, access management policies (and/or
usage constraints) may be applied to an entire portfolio, or to an
individual product or product type. The portfolios (the grouping)
and the access management policies and/or groups of constraints
that are applied to the grouping may be mutable and may be shared
between accounts, in some embodiments. In some embodiments, the
smallest atomic unit of software resources may be an application,
and a portfolio may represent a logical collection of
applications.
[0152] In various embodiments, actions that can be taken on a
portfolio may include one or more of the following:
[0153] 1. Create
[0154] 2. Read
[0155] 3. Search/filter
[0156] 4. Update (add/remove Products, update policy)
[0157] 5. Share
[0158] 6. Delete
[0159] As described above, in some embodiments, the IT
administrator may (e.g., through a service provider console for IT
administrators) assign resources (in this case, applications)
directly to individual users or user groups. In other embodiments,
rather than assigning each individual application to various users
and/or user groups, a collection of applications (e.g., a logical
collection of applications that are included in a defined
portfolio) may be assigned to users or user groups. For example, a
portfolio may be created for the use of a legal team that includes
a set of office productivity applications, legal software, and
compliance management software, and the portfolio may
(collectively) be assigned to the active directory user group
"legal team". In this example, in addition to (or stead of)
assigning the portfolio to the legal team (on whose behalf it was
created), the portfolio may be assigned to one or more other active
directory users and/or user groups with similar software
requirements, roles, and/or permissions to access the software
included in the portfolio.
[0160] In some embodiments, an IT administrator may select one of
two or more options indicating when updates are applied to users of
a particular portfolio. In such embodiments, if a new employee
joins a company, the IT administrator may assign them to the
portfolio, and the required software products may be automatically
delivered to their physical computing device or virtual desktop
instance. If an IT administrator adds a product to a portfolio or
removes a product from a portfolio, the portfolio may be updated
automatically. In some embodiments, the IT administrator may also
be able to set the update window for minor updates, major updates,
and hot fixes for the products in a portfolio at the portfolio
level. This setting may apply to all products in the portfolio. In
some embodiments, the IT administrator can also choose whether or
not to make the entire third party product catalog available for a
user to view, after which the end user may submit a request to
access one or more of the software products discovered in this
manner.
[0161] In some embodiments, at the product level, the IT
administrator can designate a product as being required or
optional, and can set a maximum number of installs (deployments)
for a product. For example, the IT administrator can define the
maximum number of times that a given product can be provisioned
from a portfolio, and the enterprise catalog service may enforce
this constraint, ensuring that the limit is not exceeded. Required
products are automatically installed, but end users may choose
whether or not to install optional products.
[0162] In some embodiments the IT administrator may receive new
product notifications as a weekly digest and may also see lists of
new products from within the administrator/management console of
the enterprise catalog services described herein. In some
embodiments, all products that were recently released (e.g.,
released within the last seven days) may be highlighted a displayed
list of products as being "New".
[0163] In some embodiments, an IT administrator may be able to get
detailed reports on two different levels. For example, the IT
administrator may receive an enterprise report, which includes a
list of all software products that includes, for each product, the
product name, the vendor, license type (e.g., subscription),
installs (e.g., the number of deployments), the number of
out-of-date installs, a cost per install per month, the percentage
of installations that are up-to-date, the total spend, the number
of users, the top rated products, or the number of portfolios. The
second report may reflect usage at the portfolio level, and may
include, for each product in the portfolio, information indicating
the portfolio name, the number of products in the portfolio, the
assigned users, the cost per user per month, and the total cost.
Some example portfolios may include an HR portfolio, an engineering
portfolio, a finance portfolio, a shared services portfolio, or a
customer service portfolio.
[0164] One embodiment of a method for managing desktop applications
through an enterprise catalog service (such a service implemented
by the system illustrated in FIG. 1) is illustrated by the flow
diagram in FIG. 7. As illustrated at 710, in this example, the
method may include an IT administrator of a service customer
organization selecting, through a product discovery service
interface that presents information about desktop applications that
are sourced by third parties through the product discovery service,
one or more desktop applications to be purchased or licensed from a
third party (e.g., a software vendor) on behalf of service provider
customers. In various embodiments, the selection may be dependent
on technical features (e.g., capabilities of the application and/or
resources required to execute the application), a pricing
breakdown, the applicable terms of use (e.g., licensing or
subscription terms), ratings and/or reviews, the availability of
support from the vendor and/or other information. The method may
include ingesting and/or packaging the selected third party desktop
application(s) into a product catalog owned by the IT administrator
for management through the enterprise catalog service. For example,
in some embodiments, the IT administrator may discover and select
one or more desktop applications (e.g., applications that were
developed and/or published by the service provider and/or by third
parties) to be offered to their customers and may package and/or
publish the desktop applications as isolated virtualized
applications (e.g., each packaged in its own container) for
subsequent delivery to end users through an application fulfillment
platform. As illustrated at 720, in this example, in some
embodiments, the method may include ingesting into the IT
administrator's product catalog, one or more custom desktop
applications (e.g., a line-of-business applications) that were
developed by the customer organization, e.g., using a desktop
application authoring and ingestion component (such as desktop
application authoring and ingestion tooling 116 in FIG. 1) that is
exposed to the IT administrator through the service provider
management console.
[0165] As illustrated in this example, the method may include
receiving, through the service provider management console, input
indicating the selection of one or more previously ingested and
packaged desktop applications to be included in a portfolio for
subsequent access by particular end users of a service provider
customer (as in 730). For example, in various embodiments, the
desktop applications may be selected for inclusion in a private
catalog or portfolio that may only be accessible to a subset of the
end users of the service provider customer. In one example, the
input may be received from an IT administrator of a business,
enterprise, or other organization that receives services through
the enterprise catalog service platform and/or an application
fulfillment platform (i.e., an organization that is a service
provider customer). In this example, the IT administrator may log
into the system provider management console in order to create
and/or manage one or more portfolios of applications for the use of
some or all of the members of their organization. In various
embodiments, the selection of desktop applications may be made by
the IT administrator, and may be dependent on technical features
(e.g., capabilities of the application and/or resources required to
execute the application), a pricing breakdown, the applicable terms
of use (e.g., licensing or subscription terms), ratings and/or
reviews, the availability of support from the vendor and/or other
information, including organizational needs, goals, or
policies.
[0166] As illustrated in this example, the method may also include
receiving, through the service provider management console, input
indicating the assignment of the selected application(s) to one or
more end users and/or user groups, constraints on the use of the
selected application(s), and/or configuration parameter setting(s)
for the portfolio, as in 740. For example, in some embodiments,
constraints and/or configuration parameter settings may be
specified as part of an operation to assign applications to
particular users or user groups. In other embodiments, constraints
and/or configuration parameters may be specified as part of a
separate interaction between the IT administrator and the console
(e.g., as part of a portfolio configuration operation), and
information indicating the constraints and/or configuration
parameter settings may be received as separate inputs through the
service provider management console. In some embodiments, the
constraints may indicate which (if any) of the applications in the
portfolio are required to be installed by end users and which (if
any) are optional. In some embodiments, the configuration parameter
settings may indicate whether monitoring should be enabled for the
portfolio (and/or particular applications in the portfolio) or may
indicate whether end users have the option to view lists of
applications that are not assigned to them and/or that are not
currently available in the portfolio (e.g., third party
applications that may be available through the application
fulfillment platform). As described above, other types of
constraints that may be applied to individual desktop applications
may include environmental constraints, input parameter constraints,
quotas, and/or billing constraints, in at least some
embodiments.
[0167] As illustrated in this example, the method may also include
storing information representing the assignment of the selected
applications to particular end users and/or user groups, the
constraints, and configuration parameter settings for the selected
applications, users, and portfolio, as in 750. For example, this
information may be stored in any of a variety of data structures or
database tables by a storage service implemented on the service
provider network. The method may also include making the selected
applications available to the end user(s) through a desktop
application management module interface, according to the
constraints and configuration parameter settings for the selected
applications and users, as in 760. In some cases, this may include
installing any required applications and/or making certain
applications (e.g., those applications that are assigned to a
particular end user or those an end user is allowed to know about)
visible and/or selectable through a desktop application management
module interface or (once they are installed on an end user machine
or in a virtual desktop instance) through an icon, shortcut, menu
element, or other user interface mechanism or element thereof that
was created on the desktop for the application and whose selection
launches the application.
[0168] Note that, in some embodiments and/or for some applications,
"installing" the required and/or selected applications may not
include installing the application itself (i.e., an unpackaged
application binary) on an end user's physical computing device,
virtualized computing resource instance or virtual desktop
instance, but may involve delivering some or all of the pages of
program instructions of a virtualized application (e.g., using
demand paging) to the end user's computing resource instance for
execution by a runtime engine that is installed in the end user's
computing resource instance.
[0169] As illustrated in FIG. 7, in some embodiments, the method
may also include tracking the usage of the desktop applications in
the portfolio and passing information about the usage of the
application by various end users to a service provider billing
system for subsequent use in billing the service provider
customer's IT administrator for the use of those applications (as
in 770). For example, the method may include generating usage
reports for the applications in the portfolio automatically (e.g.,
periodically or in response to changes in the catalog/portfolio or
application usage) or upon request. In some embodiments, the
reports may be delivered through the service provider management
console or desktop application management module interface (e.g.,
to IT administrators and/or end users) in addition to being passed
to a service provider billing system. In various embodiments, the
reports may indicate how many (and/or which) users are using each
application, how many (and/or which) users are using each version
of a particular application, the duration for which each
application is used by one or more users, and/or other usage
information.
[0170] As previously noted, the enterprise catalog service
platforms described herein may be used to manage server products on
behalf of customers and their end users instead of, or in addition
to, managing desktop applications. One embodiment of a method for
managing server products (e.g., server-type applications that
execute on a service provider system on behalf of an end user and
return a response) through an enterprise catalog service (such a
service implemented by the system illustrated in FIG. 1) is
illustrated by the flow diagram in FIG. 8. As illustrated at 810,
in this example, the method may include an IT administrator of a
service provider customer organization selecting, from a product
discovery service, one or more resource stack templates that are
sourced by third parties, and ingesting the resource stack
templates into a product catalog owned by the IT administrator for
subsequent deployment to end users in the customer organization.
The method may also include ingesting one or more line-of business
resource stack templates (e.g., custom resource stack templates
that were developed by the customer organization) into the IT
administrator's product catalog, as in 820.
[0171] As illustrated in this example, the method may include
receiving (e.g., from an IT administrator of a service provider
customer), through a service provider management console, input
indicating the selection of one or more previously ingested
resource stack templates to be included in a portfolio for
subsequent access by end users (as in 830). For example, in various
embodiments, the resource stack templates may be selected for
inclusion in a private catalog or portfolio that may only be
accessible to a subset of the end users of the service provider
customer. In one example, the input may be received from an IT
administrator of a business, enterprise, or other organization that
receives services through the enterprise catalog service platform
and/or from a resource stack management service (i.e., an
organization that is a service provider customer). In this example,
the IT administrator may log into the system provider management
console in order to create and/or manage one or more portfolios of
server products (each of which may be constructed using a
respective resource stack template) for the use of some or all of
the members of their organization. In various embodiments, the
selection of resource stack templates may be made by the IT
administrator, and may be dependent on technical features (e.g.,
capabilities of the server product and/or resources required to
create the corresponding resource stack), a pricing breakdown, the
applicable terms of use (e.g., licensing or subscription terms),
ratings and/or reviews, the availability of support from the vendor
and/or other information, including organizational needs, goals, or
policies.
[0172] As illustrated in this example, the method may include
receiving (e.g., from an IT administrator of a service provider
customer), through a service provider management console, input
indicating the assignment of selected resource stack template(s) to
one or more end users and/or user groups, constraints on use of the
selected template(s) and/or configuration parameter setting(s) for
the portfolio (as in 840). For example, in some embodiments,
constraints and/or configuration parameter settings may be
specified as part of an operation to assign server products to
particular users or user groups. In other embodiments, constraints
and/or configuration parameters may be specified as part of a
separate interaction between the IT administrator and the console
(e.g., as part of a portfolio configuration operation), and
information indicating the constraints and/or configuration
parameter settings may be received as separate inputs through the
service provider management console. In some embodiments, the
constraints may indicate which (if any) of the server products in
the portfolio are required to be installed by end users and which
(if any) are optional. In some embodiments, the configuration
parameter settings may indicate whether monitoring should be
enabled for the portfolio (and/or particular server products in the
portfolio) or may indicate whether end users have the option to
view lists of server products that are not assigned to them and/or
that are not currently available in the portfolio (e.g., third
party products that have not yet been ingested into the enterprise
catalog service platform). As described above, other types of
constraints that may be applied to individual server products may
include environmental constraints, input parameter constraints,
quotas, and/or billing constraints, in at least some
embodiments.
[0173] As illustrated in this example, the method may also include
storing information representing the assignment of the selected
resource stack templates to particular end users and/or user
groups, the constraints, and configuration parameter settings for
the selected resource stack templates, users, and portfolio, as in
850. For example, this information may be stored in any of a
variety of data structures or database tables by a storage service
implemented on the service provider network. The method may also
include making the selected resource stack templates available to
the end user(s) through a resource stack management service
console, according to the constraints and configuration parameter
settings for the selected resource stack templates and users, as in
860. In some cases, this may include installing any required server
products and/or making certain server products (e.g., those server
products that are assigned to a particular end user or those an end
user is allowed to know about) visible and/or selectable through a
resource stack management service console (e.g., through icons,
shortcuts, menu elements, or other user interface mechanisms or
elements thereof that were created on the resource stack management
service console for the server products and whose selection
launches the server products).
[0174] As illustrated in FIG. 8, in some embodiments, the method
may also include tracking the deployment of resource stack
templates that are included in the portfolio and passing deployment
information to a service provider billing system for subsequent use
in billing the service provider customer's IT administrator for the
use of those resource stack templates (as in 870). For example, the
method may include generating reports indicating the number of
resource stacks that are launched for each resource stack template
in the portfolio automatically (e.g., periodically or in response
to changes in the catalog/portfolio or resource stack template
usage) or upon request. In some embodiments, the reports may be
delivered through the service provider management console or
resource stack management service console (e.g., to IT
administrators and/or end users) in addition to being passed to a
service provider billing system. In various embodiments, the
reports may indicate how many (and/or which) users have deployed a
resource stack for each resource stack template, the duration for
which each resource stack instance is used by an end user, and/or
other deployment/usage information.
[0175] As discussed above, an enterprise catalog service may be
used to track and control costs. For example, portfolios, products,
computing resource instances and resource stack template may
support tagging. When a product is used, the resultant computing
resource instances or resource stacks may be tagged with the
portfolio, the product, the product version and a unique identifier
(i.e. instanceId or stack Id). These tags may be used to filter
spend data presented in a cost discovery tool, enabling the end
users to track the spending for a portfolio, a product or for a
single product deployment. End users may be able to view the costs
on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. In some embodiments, this
information may be used by an IT administrator to define and then
track spending limits on a portfolio, product or product deployment
through the enterprise catalog service (or a cost analysis module
thereof).
[0176] For example, if an end user requests a subscription to a
desktop application, and once the IT administrator has subscribed
to and provisioned the application (e.g., by installing a
virtualized application package on a virtual desktop), and various
end users start using it, the enterprise catalog service may begin
billing the IT administrator for the application (or begin metering
usage for subsequent billing). For a server product, when the
actual product is deployed, the enterprise catalog service may
begin billing the IT administrator for the product at a
pre-determined rate for the product plus the cost of the underlying
infrastructure (e.g., daily, hourly, monthly, annually, or as a
one-time cost).
[0177] As previously noted, in some embodiments, an application
(which is sometimes referred to herein as desktop application
management module) may be installed on an end user's machine or on
a virtual desktop instance that provides an interface to
virtualized desktop applications delivered from an application
fulfillment platform. In some embodiments, this application may
also provide an interface through which applications that are
physically installed on the end user's machine may be launched. For
example, after launching the desktop application management module
(e.g., by selecting an icon or shortcut on the desktop or on a
virtual desktop), an end user may, through a graphical user
interface of the desktop application management module, log into
the desktop application management module using their identity,
view a list of applications that are available for their use (e.g.,
applications that they have permission to purchase, lease or
subscribe to, install, and/or execute) or that may be made
available for their use (e.g., applications for which they may be
able to request permission to purchase, lease or subscribe to,
install, and/or execute) and select on option to purchase, lease or
subscribe to, install, and/or execute one of the listed
applications.
[0178] In some embodiments, once an end user logs into the desktop
application management module, their applications (e.g., any
application assigned to the end user) may be available and ready to
use. In some embodiments, the end user may access their application
just like they access any other desktop applications (e.g., through
a start menu or a desktop icon or shortcut). Through the desktop
application management module, the end user may be able to select
one or more of the following options: [0179] View information about
applications that were made available to the end user by their IT
administrator [0180] Subscribe to optional applications [0181]
Remove optional applications [0182] Request access to additional
applications that are listed in the full application catalog, which
may include applications sourced by the service provider and/or by
third parties (if enabled by the IT administrator) [0183] Back up
their application and configurations (e.g., automatically) [0184]
Receive notification about applications and application updates
[0185] In some embodiments, if the IT administrator has designated
an application as "required" for a given end user, it will be
installed on an end user's virtual desktop instance by default, and
cannot be removed. However, if the IT administrator has designated
an application as "optional", it may only be installed on the end
user's virtual desktop instance if the end users choose to
subscribe to the application. As noted above, if the IT
administrator has enabled the full application catalog as viewable
for a given end user, user group, catalog, or portfolio, the end
user may be able to discover additional applications that are
sourced by the service provider and/or third parties, and select a
"request application" option, which may automatically submit a
request to the IT administrator for the selected application.
[0186] In some embodiments, when a software vendor provides an
update to the application fulfillment platform (or to the service
provider) the service provider may (e.g., through the application
fulfillment platform) publish the update and make it available to
end users (e.g., through the desktop application management module.
In some embodiments, the IT administrator may be able to control
the maintenance window in which application updates are applied to
the computing resource instances of its end users. In such
embodiments, if an end user is using an application that is
targeted for an update during the maintenance window, the end user
will not experience any interruption, because the update will occur
in the background. However, the next time the end user launches the
application, the update will be applied. In some embodiments, there
may be a notification engine within the desktop application
management module that is configured to inform end users of
upcoming application updates and newly available features. The
notification engine may be accessed through the desktop application
management module graphical user interface (e.g., using a
"notifications" tab in the corresponding GUI), or using other
mechanisms, in different embodiments. For example, if the IT
administrator has made new optional applications available for end
users to subscribe to, they may be notified through the desktop
application management module. In some embodiments, the application
fulfillment platform may preserve application state by
automatically backing up applications and application data for
subsequent copy or restore operations. For example, if the virtual
desktop instance is rebuilt, the applications and application data
may be automatically restored on the virtual desktop instance.
Similarly, upon rebooting an end user's machine after a failure,
the virtual desktop instance may automatically be rebuilt, and the
applications and application data may be automatically
restored.
[0187] In one example, an end user may (through the desktop
application management module) select an option to subscribe to a
particular listed application. In response, a subscribe request may
be sent an application fulfillment service (e.g., a service
implemented by an application fulfillment platform). In this
example, the subscription request may indicate that user X on
machine Y connected to domain Z requests access to the selected
application. The fulfillment service may verify whether the end
user is entitled to use the selected application and, if so, may
initiate the execution of a "create fulfillment" workflow that
delivers the requested application to the end user's physical
computing device or virtual desktop instance, adds it to a default
catalog for the end user's organization (e.g., a catalog owed by an
IT administrator), and assigns it to the end user (or multiple end
users). The workflow may also include a sequence of steps to
prepare the application for launching that include registering a
virtual desktop session, virtualizing the selected application,
generating an icon or shortcut for the virtualized application and
placing it on the end user's machine (e.g., on the desktop or on
the virtual desktop) and/or adding the virtualized application to a
start menu or other interface mechanism, among other actions.
[0188] In some embodiments, an IT administrator may use approval
chains to require a manual approval prior to a product being used
or a resource stack being updated or deleted. For example, an
approval chain (which includes a set of steps) may be associated
with a product by the IT administrator. Each step consists of a
notification sent to a user, administrator or decision maker. The
notification contains a link to approve or deny the request along
with information about the user and the product to inform the
decision to approve or deny the request. In various embodiments,
approval chains may be applied to all products in a portfolio or to
individual products. In some embodiments, when an attempt is made
to use a server product that has an associated approval chain or to
update or delete of resource stack that has an approval chain, the
resource stack may be put in an "approval pending" state until it
has been fully approved through the approval chain. In some
embodiments, while the resource stack is in this state, the IT
administrator and/or end user who initiated the operation on the
product may be able to view the current approval step through the
administrator/management console or end user console to track the
progress of the product through the approval process. In this
example, once all approvals have been accepted, the operation will
continue.
[0189] As described in detail herein, an IT administrator may in
some cases retain full control of the service provider resources
that are associated with a product that is provisioned for the
benefit of their organization. For example, the IT administrator
may have full control over the service provider accounts and roles
used to provision products for their end users. The service
provider resources may be provisioned in either the end user's
account or in the IT administrator's account (which may be the
customer organization's root account). To retain full control over
the service provider resources, the IT administrator may specify
(e.g., at a catalog/portfolio level or a product level), that
resources should be provisioned in the IT administrator's account
or the organization's root account. For example, when providing a
server product that is implemented as a resource stack, the IT
administrator may specify that the underlying service provider
resources should be provisioned in the IT administrator's account
and may provide a link to the resulting service as an "output". For
such a product, end users would be able to see that the service was
created (and retrieve the corresponding URL for the service), but
would not be able to view or access the service provider
resources.
[0190] In some embodiments, whether a product is provisioned in the
end user's account or the IT administrator's account, the IT
administrator can view the products that have been provisioned from
a catalog or portfolio that the IT administrator owns (e.g., by
specifying an identity and access management role for products that
are provisioned under the end user's account). For products built
from resource stack templates, the IT administrator may also track
product usage through the administrator/management console. For
example, the IT administrator may be able view information about
the products, the account(s) in which they have been provisioned,
the health state, and the costs currently associated with the
product.
[0191] As previously noted, products selected from the enterprise
catalog service and launched on behalf of end users may be
provisioned and/or executed under the end user's account, roles,
and permissions or using the account, roles, and permissions of
another user (e.g., the IT administrator or another user with
higher permission levels than the end user). In various embodiments
of the enterprise catalog service, some or all of the following use
cases may be supported: [0192] 1. An end user selects and launches
a product from a catalog or portfolio and the resource stack (and
resources) are created in the end user's account. In this case, all
operations of the resource stack management service, as well as
operations of underlying services within resource stack management
service and/or the enterprise catalog service, are performed as the
end user (using forward access sessions). [0193] 2. An end user
selects and launches a product from the catalog or portfolio that
has an identity and access management (IAM) role associated with
it. In this case, all operations of the resource stack management
service, as well as operations of underlying services within
resource stack management service and/or the enterprise catalog
service, are performed using the IAM role specified by the product
(e.g., by assuming that IAM role). This may enable administrators
to define products that contain an array of service provider
resources without the end user having IAM permissions to the
underlying services. In this case, the end user may only need
access to the enterprise catalog service APIs. [0194] 3. As an
extension of use case 2 above, the role associated with a product
may be in a different account from the end-user. This may allow for
"managed service" scenarios in which the end user controls the
(create, update, delete) life cycle of the resource stack, but does
not have access to, or even need to know about, the resources that
are being used to implement the resource stack.
[0195] In the latter two cases, the service catalog runtime may act
as a trusted entity allowing administrators to define IAM policies
for the roles that only allow the service catalog runtime to assume
them. This may allow administrators to lock down end user accounts
so that they may only launch and manage services through the
service catalog. In some embodiments, the catalog service may store
metadata about the product (name, description, etc.), and the
service catalog runtime may be responsible for defining and storing
additional information about a product. For example, the service
catalog runtime may be responsible for defining the raw resource
stack template that defines the resources that must be created for
the product (which may include any resource supported by the
resource stack management service other than IAM resources),
resource stack constraints, a parameter grouping document, and/or
an IAM role that the service catalog runtime will assume when the
product is acted upon. Note that, although constraints live inside
the template, constraints may also be added at several levels
within the service catalog, and the constraints documents may be
joined together as part of processing the inputs when a stack is
launched or updated. Among other things, the constraints may define
what values a user may pass into the parameters during
construction. The parameter grouping document may define the
ordering/grouping of parameters for the console when rendering them
to the end user. This feature may allow the creator of the product
to have some control over how these options are presented in the
console when a user is creating a resource stack.
[0196] In various embodiments, the resource stack management
service may expose any or all of the following APIs: [0197]
LaunchStack--This API creates a resource stack for the provided
product. [0198] TerminateStack--This API deletes a specified
resource stack and all resources associated with it. [0199]
DescribeStack--This API provides detailed information about a
resource stack (e.g., input parameters, outputs, etc.). [0200]
ListStackEvents--This API provides a list of events for a resource
stack (e.g., resource creation, updates, etc.). In some
embodiments, this list may be filtered for certain users (e.g.,
they may not be able to see the service provider resources). [0201]
ListStacks--This API lists all of the resource stacks for the
account, along with basic information about them. [0202]
UpdateStack--This API updates a product to a new version of the
product. [0203] UpdateStackConfiguration--This API allows updates
to the input parameters of a stack, giving IT administrators more
control over what their end users can do.
[0204] As noted above, in some embodiments, an IT administrator (or
other privileged user) who defines a portfolio can share their
portfolio of products, permissions, and constraints with other
users (e.g., with other customer accounts) and/or replicate them
across regions (or across IT administrators) as an atomic unit.
Using these mechanisms, the recipients of the shared or replicated
portfolio may get access to the products, and inherit the
permissions and constraints that were defined by the portfolio
owner without having to build or configure such portfolios
themselves from scratch. As noted above, the recipients may be able
to further constrain the use of the products in the shared or
replicated portfolio, add users to the shared or replicated
portfolio, and/or add other types of permissions to the shared or
replicated portfolio (e.g., further limiting access to the shared
or replicated portfolio), but may be unable to modify the existing
portfolio. As described above, in order to share a portfolio, the
sharer may specify an account with which the portfolio is to be
shared. In some embodiments, a potential recipient of a shared
portfolio may request that a particular portfolio be shared with
them, as long as they know its portfolio key. In other words, a
portfolio may not be discoverable except by those with whom the
portfolio key has been shared. As noted above, when and if the
portfolio owner modifies the portfolio, their changes may be
automatically be picked up by the recipients. In some embodiments,
before the portfolio is actually shared, a request to share the
portfolio may need to be approved (e.g., by one or more managers
within the customer organization of the sharer).
[0205] As described above, in some embodiments of the systems
described herein, an IT administrator (or other privileged user) in
a service provider customer organization may be able to define
constraints for the software products that are managed by the
service provider (e.g., through an enterprise catalog service) on
behalf of the customer organization. In these systems, constraints
serve as mechanisms to limit the ability of end users to perform
certain actions, or to limit the ways in which certain actions are
taken (e.g., the ways in which an end user is able to launch a
software product). The systems and methods described herein may
provide a lot of flexibility for IT administrators to define and
apply these constraints, including the ability to set constraints
on a variety of entities such as on a product, on a portfolio, or
on a user, and/or on the relationships between them. For example,
the systems described herein may support the application of
constraints on a user-to-product arc (in which the constraint is
enforced when a given product is launched by a particular user) or
on a product-to-portfolio arc (in which a constraint may be
enforced when any user in a portfolio launches a given product
within that portfolio).
[0206] In some embodiments, the constraints that may be applied to
products, portfolios and users (and on different arcs between them)
may include various types of launch constraints. For example, a
launch constraint may specify that the users within a given
portfolio can only launch three total instances of a specific
software product at a time (collectively). Another launch
constraint may reflect a quota at a higher level, e.g., it may
specify a maximum of twenty installations of a given product for
the end users within a particular service provider customer
account. Another launch constraint may specify that a particular
product can only be launched in a specified region (e.g., "U.S.
East"). Still other constraints may restrict the computing
resources on which a software product can be launched. For example,
a constraint may specify that only virtualized computing resource
instances of particular types or sizes may be used to launch a
particular product (e.g., specifying that a product must launch on
an instance of type B-med or that it cannot launch on an instance
type of C-Xlarge), or may specify a minimum or maximum capacity for
the computing resource instances on which the product can be
launched by end users (e.g., specifying a maximum instance size of
A-large). As described in more detail below, a constraint may
include a single rule or a set of rules, and may provide a
mechanism for customer organizations (or IT administrators thereof)
to define a set of constraints in order to limit what end users
within a certain account can do. These and other types of
constraints (including those that specify launch credentials) may
be defined and/or added to software products, portfolios, and users
(and to various combinations thereof) when software products are
assigned to end users, when portfolios are created and configured,
or at other times.
[0207] In some embodiments, in addition to launch constraints, such
as those described above, and other types of constraints that may
be added to a software product by an IT administrator to restrict
its deployment, a software product may be subject to constraints
that are inherent to the product due to its definition and/or that
are included when the product itself is constructed. For example,
software products (e.g., server products) that are defined using
resource stack templates may be subject to constraints that are
specified in those resource stack templates. In one example, a
template constraint may specify that no more than four instances of
a given resource stack can be running at the same time, or that a
server product constructed from a given resource stack template can
only run in conjunction with another resource that is tagged with a
particular value. In some embodiments, when a software product is
launched, the constraints applied at different levels may be
aggregated and enforced. For example, in some embodiments, the
rules defined in different constraints or sets of constraints to
which the software product is subject may be aggregated to create a
composite constraint according to a pre-determined function for
combining them (e.g., as defined by an IT administrator), and this
composite constraint may be enforced when the software product is
launched. This may include creating a composite constraint that
includes the most restrictive combination of rules defined by the
applicable constraints or sets of constraints, the least
restrictive combination of rules defined by the applicable
constraints or sets of constraints, or a combination of rules that
takes into account any relative priorities between rules from
different sources that was defined by the IT administrator (e.g.,
for the specific software product, for software products of a
particular type, for software products in a given portfolio, or for
all software products).
[0208] As described in more detail below, within an enterprise
catalog service such as those described herein, constraints may be
attached to multiple artifacts in multiple ways, including any or
all of the following: [0209] They may be defined in a resource
stack template for a software product [0210] They may be associated
with a specific IAM principal [0211] They may be associated with a
software product within a portfolio that is managed by the
enterprise catalog service [0212] They may be associated with a
portfolio that is managed by the enterprise catalog service [0213]
They may be associated with a software product that is managed by
the enterprise catalog service
[0214] In some embodiments, the different constraints to which a
software product is subject may be defined in such a way that they
are composed by simply combining all of the rules into a single
constraint definition (e.g., a single constraint object or file)
that is used to filter the valid set of parameter values available
to the end user when the software product that is subject to those
constraints is launched. Each rule within the resulting composite
constraint may be applied to the possible values of the
corresponding parameters, resulting a set of values that represents
the most limited set of values. For example, if constraints are
defined for a given software product at its creation (e.g., if
constraint are specified in the resource stack template for the
product), and that software product is also included in a portfolio
to which other constraints are applied (at the portfolio level),
both the template constraints and those added by IT administrator
as part of the configuration of the portfolio may be enforced when
the software product is launched. However, given that a constraint
represents a restriction on what can be done within the range of
capabilities that are available in a given context, a constraint
added to the product at the portfolio level can only be used to
further limit the use of the given software product that has
already been limited by its template constraints. In other words,
the portfolio constraints cannot be used to reestablish or replace
any capabilities that have been made unavailable (e.g., restricted
out) due to higher-level constraints (e.g., the template
constraints). In a specific example, if given a template constraint
specifies that a component of a sever product can only be
implemented using an m3 instance type (of any size), and a
constraint added to a portfolio that includes the product specifies
that the component can use either an m3-med instance type or a
t1-micro instance type, the instance type would be limited to the
m3-med instance type, as the constraint at the portfolio cannot add
the capability to use the t1-micro instance type that was
restricted out by the template constraint.
[0215] In some embodiments, once a constraint has been defined,
data representing the constraint may be stored on service provider
resources, on behalf of the enterprise service catalog. For
example, in some embodiments, constraints may be implemented as
objects (e.g., JSON object files, documents, or as files that are
compliant with another open-source or proprietary standard for a
human-readable text format or scripting language whose content can
be parsed and acted upon by components of the enterprise catalog
service to apply those constraints, as appropriate.) In addition,
data may be stored (e.g., within those objects and/or in other
objects, files, or data structures) indicating an association
between the constraint and any products, portfolios, and/or users
with which it is associated and/or indicating any product versions,
portfolios, and/or other service provider customer accounts with
which it has been shared, as described herein. In other words, in
some embodiments, rather than existing as metadata that is included
in other objects (objet that represent products and/or portfolios),
in the systems described herein, constraints may be created and
managed as first class objects that are separate and distinct from
the products and portfolios to which they are added (and for which
they define usage rules) through their own interfaces (e.g.,
through various user interfaces presented to IT administrators
through a service provider management console). In such
embodiments, when a constraint is added to a product or portfolio,
a reference to the constraint object may be added to the object
representing the product or portfolio as metadata.
[0216] In some embodiments, an enterprise catalog service, such as
those described herein, may maintain (on service provider
resources) a repository for constraint objects and/or a repository
of objects that define the relationships between the constraints
and the products/portfolios to which they apply. In one example,
for each constraint that is applied on the portfolio level, the
service may store an object that includes: a unique resource
identifier of the portfolio, a unique identifier of a product
within the portfolio to which the constraint applies, and the data
representing the constraint itself. Similarly, for each constraint
that is applied on the product level, the service may store an
object that includes a unique identifier of a product within the
portfolio to which the constraint applies and the data representing
the constraint itself. In some embodiments, when a software product
that is managed through the enterprise catalog services launched,
this repository may be consulted to extract the constraints (e.g.,
the rules within all of the applicable constraints) that are to be
enforced for this launch.
[0217] In some embodiments, when a software product (e.g., a
desktop application) is assigned to a user by an IT administrator,
the IT administrator can apply user-level constraints to this
user-to-product arc. For example, the IT administrator may specify
that this user can only have this particular version of the
software product, or may select an auto-update or auto-deploy
option for the software product for this user.
[0218] In some embodiments, pre-defined constraints may be made
available to other entities through one of several constraint
sharing mechanisms. For example, an IT administrator who creates a
constraint with a given context (e.g., under a particular one of
several customer accounts of a customer organization) may allow
other members of the customer organization who are outside the
context in which the constraint was created (e.g., IT
administrators who access the enterprise catalog service under
different ones of the customer organization's accounts) to discover
(e.g., find) the constraint (e.g., through searches, dropdown
menus, or other user interface elements of various consoles
provided to them by the service provider) and to add it to
products, portfolios, and users in their own contexts (e.g., in the
contexts of those other customer accounts). In some embodiments,
constraints may also be discovered (e.g., found) and used outside
of the customer organization. In some embodiments, an IT
administrator who creates a constraint may be able to designated
the constraint as sharable (e.g., outside the customer
organization, or only within the customer organization at large) or
as private (e.g., not sharable at all, or only under the same
service provider customer account). In still other embodiments, an
IT administrator may explicitly share a constraint with a specified
entity, but this may require one or more approvals (e.g., in an
approval chain). Note that, in some embodiments, constraint objects
may be encrypted when stored on service provider resources and/or
when shared with other entities (e.g., for security purposes),
instead of, or in addition to being stored and/or shared in a
human-readable format. In some embodiments, the choice of whether
to encrypt constraint objects or not may be determined by an IT
administrator on a per-constraint basis or as a default for all
constraints created by (or on behalf of) the customer organization.
In other embodiments, constraint objects may be encrypted (or not)
as configured for the enterprise catalog service as a whole.
[0219] In some embodiments, constraints may only be shared with IT
administrators or accounts within the same customer organization,
while in other embodiments they may be shared with IT
administrators or accounts of other customer organizations (e.g.,
partner organizations) or with the general public. In some
embodiments, constraint sharing requests may require one or more
approvals by IT administrators, managers, or other privileged users
in the sharer's organization. Similarly, requests to import a
shared constraint (whether it was explicitly shared or discovered
through an internal or public publication of its name and/or
contents) may also require one or more approvals by IT
administrators, managers, or other privileged users in the
recipient's organization. In some embodiments, importing a shared
constraint may include retrieving it from a central repository that
is internal to the sharer's customer organization, extracting it
from an email message or through an actionable notification
message, or downloading it from a website. In some embodiments,
constraints may only be shared with principals having particular
IAM roles (as defined by the constraint creator/owner). In some
embodiments, to share a constraint with another customer account,
the constraint creator/owner may (e.g., directly or through a
service provider management console) send a "share my constraint"
request to the IT administrator or account with which the
constraint is to be shared. The owner of that account (i.e., the
recipient of the sharing request) may approve the sharing request
and respond with an IAM role that the constraint creator/owner can
use to grant permissions for the constraint to the recipient
account. In other words, in some embodiments, the constraint
creator/owner may use IAM roles to control access to
constraints.
[0220] FIGS. 9A-9D illustrate examples of the information presented
through a service provider console of an enterprise catalog service
when creating a constraint, according to at least some embodiments.
For example, FIGS. 9A-9D illustrate information presented by a
graphical user interface (GUI) 900 for a service provider console
of an enterprise catalog service to an IT administrator of a
service provider customer. Note that in some embodiments, the IT
administrator may access the service provider console through a
browser application (e.g., as a web page). In various embodiments,
FIGS. 9A-9D, GUI 900 may present different views in order for the
IT administrator to manage desktop applications, server-side
products, or product subscriptions (which may include product
licenses); to generate and/or view reports (e.g., desktop
application usage and/or server product deployment reports); to
create and configure portfolios, create constraints, or to add
software products, constraints, and users to portfolios; to search
for software products; and to view (and, in some cases, take action
in response to) various notifications (e.g., from other components
of the enterprise catalog service platform or components of other
platforms and services with which the enterprise catalog service
platform interacts). In some embodiments, an IT administrator may
(upon first logging into the enterprise catalog service) be
presented with an interface through which they are instructed to
create at least one portfolio. In other embodiments, an IT
administrator may choose to do this later (e.g., after discovering
and subscribing to one or more software products for the subsequent
use of their end users).
[0221] In the example illustrated in FIG. 9A, an IT administrator
has logged into the enterprise catalog service, e.g., through a
service provider management console. In this example, the IT
administrator has selected an option (e.g., under a main
"Constraints" page) to "create constraint", in response to which
the IT administrator is presented with the information illustrated
in FIG. 9A. Other options available from the main "Constraints"
page may include "add rule", "delete constraint", or "share
constraint", each of which may present information that is
different than the information depicted in FIG. 9A. As illustrated
in this example, in order to create a new constraint, the IT
administrator may enter a constraint name and a description of the
constraint into corresponding text boxes of GUI 900. In this
example, the IT administrator has indicated that the new constraint
will be named "Dev. team X constraint", and that it may include
rules for the software products used by Development Team X. After
entering this information, the IT administrator has opted to create
the constraint by selecting a user interface element "Create and
Continue", as shown near the bottom right corner of the display. In
this example, after selecting the "Create and Continue" option, the
IT administrator may be presented with one of several screens,
including, but not limited to, screens similar to those depicted in
FIGS. 9B and 9C, according to various embodiments.
[0222] FIG. 9B also illustrates information presented to the IT
administrator by GUI 900 on behalf of the enterprise catalog
service. In this example, after providing the initial information
needed to create a constraint (as shown in FIG. 9A), the IT
administrator is presented with an interface through which the IT
administrator can add rules to the constraint. In this example, the
IT administrator has chosen (by selection of one of two available
radio buttons) to add rules to the "Dev. team X constraint" that
restrict users and permissions. More specifically, the IT
administrator has elected to add a rule specifying that a software
product to which this constraint is subsequently applied is to be
launched using the end user's credentials (e.g., the credentials of
the end user who requested the launch or on whose behalf the
software product is launched). This option may be selected, for
example, for unmanaged software products. Alternatively, the IT
administrator could have elected to add a rule specifying that a
software product to which this constraint is subsequently applied
is to be launched using an IAM role, with the IT administrator
specifying (in a separate user interface element, such as a text
box or pull-down menu) one or more IAM roles under which the
software product can be launched. This option may be selected, for
example, for managed software products.
[0223] In this example, the IT administrator has provided input
specifying a name for the rule, "launch in managed account", in a
text box of GUI 900. Note that, in other embodiments, an IT
administrator may be presented with additional information and/or
may have different options for defining a rule to be added to a
constraint. In this example, after defining the rule "launch in
managed account", the IT administrator has selected to "Add Rule",
which may initiate an operation for storing (e.g., on service
provider resources, on behalf of the enterprise service catalog)
data representing the rule and indicating the association of the
rule to the constraint "Dev. team X constraint". If the IT
administrator wishes to add more rules to this constraint, the IT
administrator may select "Next rule", as shown in near the bottom
right corner of GUI 900. In that case, the IT administrator may be
presented with a screen similar to that depicted in FIG. 9B, but
that does not yet indicate any details of the next rule to be added
to the constraint. Other options may include "Cancel" (which, if
selected prior to selecting "Add Rule", may cause this exercise to
be aborted, such that the rule being defined is not added to the
constraint) and "Back to Constraints (main)" (which, if selected,
may result in the presentation of information to the IT
administrator indicating multiple options for managing constraints
on behalf of the customer organization).
[0224] Similar to FIG. 9B, FIG. 9C illustrates information
presented to the IT administrator by GUI 900 on behalf of the
enterprise catalog service in order add another rule to the
constraint "Dev. team X constraint". In this example, the IT
administrator has chosen (by selection of the other one of the two
available radio buttons) to add rules to the "Dev. team X
constraint" that restrict launch parameters for the software
products to which this constraint is subsequently applied. More
specifically, the IT administrator has elected to add a rule
restricting the user input parameters that can be specified by an
end user when launching such a product. Here, the IT administrator
has provided input indicating the name of the rule ("restrict
instance type") and a description of the rule ("front end instance
type is B-med"). In this example, the IT administrator has
indicated that this rule should always be applied when a software
product to which this constraint is subsequently added is launched.
Other options that could have been selected by the IT
administrator, in this example, include applying this rule only
when the software product is launched by a specific user, by a
specific user group, or under a specific IAM role (e.g., to limit
the use of more expensive options by some users), or only when
another product input parameter has a specific value (e.g., to
restrict the allowable combinations of various input parameter
values). For example, the text shown in FIG. 9C as underlined text
may represents hyperlinks that, when selected, cause an additional
user interface element to be presented in order to provide
additional information. Here, the IT administrator, having selected
an option other than "always apply this restriction", and in
response to selection of the corresponding hyperlink, would have
been presented with an opportunity to specify a user, user group,
IAM role or input parameter value for those rules.
[0225] Other types of rules for restricting the user input
parameters that can be specified by an end user when launching such
a product may include rules specifying the data types or the number
of users that must be supported by the software products to which
the constraint applies, among others. In addition, other types of
rules (e.g., environmental restrictions, quotas, or billing
restrictions) may be added to the constraint instead of, or in
addition to, rules restricting user input parameters (e.g., by
selecting the corresponding user interface elements near the top
right corner of GUI 900). In this example, after defining the rule
"restrict instance type", the IT administrator has selected to "Add
Rule", which may initiate an operation for storing (e.g., on
service provider resources, on behalf of the enterprise service
catalog) data representing the rule and indicating the association
of the rule to the constraint "Dev. team X constraint". If the IT
administrator wishes to add more rules to this constraint, the IT
administrator may again select "Next rule", as shown in near the
bottom right corner of GUI 900. Other options may include "Cancel"
(which, if selected prior to selecting "Add Rule", may cause this
exercise to be aborted, such that the rule being defined is not
added to the constraint) and "Back to Constraints (main)" (which,
if selected, may result in the presentation of information to the
IT administrator indicating multiple options for managing
constraints on behalf of the customer organization).
[0226] FIG. 9D illustrates information presented to the IT
administrator by GUI 900 on behalf of the enterprise catalog
service indicating multiple options for managing constraints on
behalf of the customer organization (e.g., when the IT
administrator logs into the service provider management console and
elects to manage constraints, or in response to the selection of
"Back to Constraints (main)" on any of the other screens presented
to the IT administrator when performing operations for managing
constraints (such as those depicted in FIGS. 9B and 9C). In this
example, the information presented to the IT administrator may
include a list of the constraints that have been defined by the IT
administrator (or that are otherwise available to be added to
software products/portfolios by the IT administrator, e.g.,
following their importation). In this example, the IT
administrator, having selected the constraint "Dev. team X
constraint" (which, in this case is the only constraint listed) is
presented with additional information about the constraint (e.g., a
list that include the names of the rules that are included in the
selected constraint). Here, the list of rules includes the rules
defined and added to the constraint "Dev. team X constraint"
through the interactions depicted in FIGS. 9B and 9C. As
illustrated in this example, from this screen, the IT administrator
may elect to create another constraint, add a rule to an existing
constraint, delete a constraint, or share a constraint, among other
things, by selecting the corresponding user interface elements
shown near the top of GUI 900. In addition, the IT administrator
may elect to edit or delete one or more of the rules listed for
each of the IT administrator's constraints. As illustrated in FIG.
9D, the text "edit" and "delete" next to each listed rule may
represent hyperlinks that, if selected, would result in the
presentation of an additional user interface element through which
the IT administrator is given the opportunity to make changes to a
rule or delete the rule, respectively. Note that, in some
embodiments, this may include presenting to the IT administrator a
screen similar to those depicted in FIG. 9B or 9C.
[0227] FIG. 10 is a flow diagram illustrating one embodiment of a
method for defining a constraint in an enterprise catalog service.
As illustrated at 1010, in this example, the method may include an
IT administrator of a service provider customer organization
initiating the creation of a constraint to be applied to one or
more individual software products or portfolios. The method may
include the IT administrator providing input indicating the name of
the constraint and a description of the constraint (as in 1020),
and the IT administrator providing input indicating the name of a
rule to be included in the constraint, along with its rule type (as
in 1030).
[0228] As illustrated in this example, if the rule specifies launch
credentials (such as whether a software product to which it is
applied should be launched using the end user's credentials or with
an IAM role, or otherwise constraining who can launch the software
product and the credentials they must use to do so), shown as the
positive exit from 1040, the method may include the IT
administrator providing input indicating the credentials to be used
to launch such a product, as in 1050. If the rule does not specify
launch credentials, but instead specifies launch constraints (such
as any of the environmental, input parameter, quota or billing
constraints described herein or other types of launch constraints
indicating how a software product can be used), shown as the
negative exit from 1040, the method may include the IT
administrator providing input indicating a launch constraint type,
a rule name, the conditions under which it applies, and/or a
description of the rule, as in 1060. In some embodiments, the IT
administrator may also be able to provide input indicating whether
(or not) the constraint is sharable (not shown).
[0229] Once the rule has been added, if the IT administrator wishes
to add more rules to this constraint at this time, shown as the
positive exit from 1070, the method may include repeating the
operations illustrated as 1030-1060 for each of those additional
rules. If, or once, there are no additional rules to add to this
constraint (at this time), the constraint creation may be complete.
In this case, the method may include storing (e.g., on service
provider resources, on behalf of the enterprise service catalog)
the constraint for subsequent retrieval during a product launch to
which it applies, as in 1080.
[0230] As described above, constraints, once defined, may be added
to products and/or portfolios by an IT administrator, after which
the rules included in those constraints may be enforced when the
corresponding products are launched, as applicable. FIGS. 11A-11B
illustrate examples of the information presented through a service
provider console of an enterprise catalog when adding a constraint
to a software product and to a portfolio, respectively, according
to at least some embodiments. More specifically, FIG. 11A
illustrates information presented to an IT administrator of a
service provider customer by GUI 1100 on behalf of the enterprise
catalog service, indicating multiple options for managing the
constraints that are associated with particular individual software
products. In this example, the IT administrator has selected the
product "website design package A", and has elected to search the
available constraints (e.g., constraints that have been defined by
the IT administrator or that are otherwise available to be added to
software products by the IT administrator, e.g., following their
importation) for "launch constraints". As a result of this search,
the IT administrator is presented with a list of available
constraints, some of which have been added to the selected software
product and others of which have not. Note that each constraint may
include any number of restrictions (rules) regarding required
launch credentials and/or restrictions on how the software product
can (and cannot) be launched. In this example, the IT administrator
has selected the constraint "Dev. team X constraint" (which
specifies associated software products should be launched using the
end user's credentials and that includes a restriction on the front
end instance type for associated software products to instance type
"B-med") to be added to the software product "website design
package A".
[0231] Other constraints that currently apply to "website design
package A" include a restriction on the maximum size for the middle
tier instance type ("C-large"), a requirement that the product
supports HTML data, and a requirement that the product support to
up 100,000 users. In this example, through the screen depicted in
GIU 1100, the IT administrator may select and edit (or remove) any
of the other constraints listed for "website design package A",
after which the IT administrator may choose "Select & Continue"
to apply these changes.
[0232] FIG. 11B illustrates information presented to an IT
administrator by GUI 1100 on behalf of the enterprise catalog
service indicating multiple options for managing the constraints
that are associated with particular portfolios. In this example,
the IT manager has elected to manage constraints for a portfolio
named "Bob's team", which includes four software products and five
users (all of which are listed on the left side of GUI 1100). As in
the previous example, the IT administrator has selected the product
"website design package A", and has elected to search the available
constraints (e.g., constraints that have been defined by the IT
administrator or that are otherwise available to be added to
software products by the IT administrator, e.g., following their
importation) for "launch constraints". As a result of this search,
the IT administrator is presented with a list of available
constraints, some of which have been added to the selected software
product and others of which have not. Again note that each
constraint may include any number of restrictions (rules) regarding
required launch credentials and/or restrictions on how the software
product can (and cannot) be launched.
[0233] As in the previous example, the IT administrator has
selected the constraint "Dev. team X constraint" (which specifies
associated software products should be launched using the end
user's credentials and that includes a restriction on the front end
instance type for associated software products to instance type
"B-med") to be added to the software product "website design
package A". Other constraints that currently apply to "website
design package A" include a restriction on the maximum size for the
middle tier instance type ("C-large"), a requirement that the
product supports HTML data, and a requirement that the product
support to up 100,000 users. As in the previous example, through
the screen depicted in GIU 1100, the IT administrator may select
and edit (or remove) any of the other constraints listed for
"website design package A", after which the IT administrator may
choose "Select & Continue" to apply these changes. However,
unlike in the previous example, the IT administrator has also
selected the product "database package C", and has specified that
the selected constraints should be applied to both "website design
package A" and "database package C" only when they are launched by
selected ones of the users in portfolio "Bob's team" (specifically,
Bob and Mary). In this example, the IT administrator may select
other combinations of constraints that should be applied to other
combinations of the software products and users in the portfolio
"Bob's team." As illustrated in these and other examples, in some
embodiments, when a constraint (or constraint group) is added to a
portfolio, it may be applied to all software products in the
portfolio and/or to all users in the portfolio (e.g., it may be
applied when any one of the software products is launched by and
one of the users in the portfolio), while in other embodiments, it
may be possible to limit the software products and/or users within
the portfolio to which the constraint applies. Note also that in
other embodiments, a constraint (or constraint group) may be added
to a collection of constraints that is applied on a product or user
basis (e.g., regardless of whether the product or user is included
in a given portfolio) through an interface other than one through
which a portfolio is created.
[0234] One embodiment of a method for adding constraints to
individual software products is illustrated by the flow diagram in
FIG. 12. As illustrated at 1210, in this example, the method may
include an IT administrator of a service provider customer
organization logging into an administrator console of a service
provider (e.g., an administrator console of an enterprise catalog
service). The method may include the IT administrator, though the
console, assigning a software product to an end user or end user
group, thereby granting them permission to discover and launch the
software product, as in 1220. The method may also include the IT
administrator initiating an operation to add a constraint on the
use of the software product by the end user or end user group, as
in 1230. As described herein, such a constraint may include any
number of restrictions (rules) regarding required launch
credentials and/or restrictions on how the software product can
(and cannot) be launched.
[0235] As illustrated in this example, if the IT administrator
wishes to add more constraints to add to this software product at
this time, shown as the positive exit from 1240, the method may
include repeating the operation illustrated in 1230 for each of
those additional constraints. This is illustrated in FIG. 12 by the
feedback from the positive exit of 1240 to 1230. If, or once, there
are no additional constraints to be added to this software product
(at this time), shown as the negative exit from 1240, but if there
are more software products to assign to end users, shown as the
positive exit from 1250, the method may include repeating the
operations in 1220-1240 for each additional product-to-user
assignment. This is illustrated in FIG. 12 by the feedback from the
positive exit of 1250 to 1220. If, or once, there are no additional
product-to-user assignments to be made (at this time), shown as the
negative feedback from 1250, this assignment exercise may be
complete. At some point later, the method may include, in response
to a request from an end user, launching a software product
specified in the request in accordance with any constraints placed
on the software product when it was constructed and those added by
the IT administrator during this exercises, as in 1260.
[0236] Note that while FIG. 12 illustrates an example embodiment in
which constraints are added to a software product when it is
assigned to an end user, in other embodiments, an IT administrator
may add constraints to a software product (and/or remove
constraints from a software product) at one or more other times,
instead of, or in addition to, when the software product is
assigned to end users.
[0237] One embodiment of a method for adding a constraint to a
portfolio is illustrated by the flow diagram in FIG. 13. As
illustrated at 1310, in this example, the method may include an IT
administrator of a service provider customer organization logging
into an administrator console of a service provider (e.g., an
administrator console of an enterprise catalog service. The method
may include the IT administrator, though the console, adding a
software product to a portfolio, as in 1320, thereby granting
permission to the users and/or user groups in the portfolio to
discover and launch the software product. The method may also
include the IT administrator initiating an operation to add a
constraint on the use of software product(s) in the portfolio, as
in 1330. As described herein, such a constraint may include any
number of restrictions (rules) regarding required launch
credentials and/or restrictions on how the software products can
(and cannot) be launched.
[0238] As illustrated in this example, if the IT administrator
provides input specifying particular ones of the software products
within the portfolio to which the constraint applies, shown as the
positive exit from 1340, the method may include storing (e.g., on
service provider resources, on behalf of the enterprise service
catalog) data reflecting the association of the constraint with the
specified product(s), as in 1340. If the IT administrator does not
specify any software products to which the constraint applies,
shown as the negative exit from 1340, the method may include
storing (e.g., on service provider resources, on behalf of the
enterprise service catalog) data reflecting the association of the
constraint with all of the software products in the portfolio, as
in 1335. Similarly, if the IT administrator provides input
specifying particular ones of the users within the portfolio users
(e.g., individual end users, user groups, or IAM roles) to which
the constraint applies, shown as the positive exit from 1350, the
method may include storing (e.g., on service provider resources, on
behalf of the enterprise service catalog) data reflecting the
association of the constraint with the specified users, as in 1360.
However, if the IT administrator does not specify any particular
ones of the users in the portfolio to which the constraint applies,
shown as the negative exit from 1350, the method may include
storing (e.g., on service provider resources, on behalf of the
enterprise service catalog) data reflecting the association of the
constraint with all of the users in the portfolio (e.g., all of the
individual end users, user groups, or IAM roles in the portfolio),
as in 1355.
[0239] As illustrated in this example, at some point after the
constraint has been applied to the portfolio, the method may
include, in response to a request from an end user, launching a
software product specified in the request in accordance with any
constraints placed on the software product when it was constructed
and those added by the IT administrator during this exercise (e.g.,
those that apply to the specified software product and to the end
user who requested the launch), as in 1370. Note that IT
administrator may repeat any or all of the operations illustrated
in FIG. 13 in order to add one or more other software products to
the portfolio and to add constraints to those software products, if
desired (not shown). Also note that, while FIG. 13 illustrates an
example embodiment in which constraints are added to a portfolio
when it is created and configured, in other embodiments, an IT
administrator may add constraints to a portfolio (and/or remove a
constraint from a portfolio) at one or more other times, instead
of, or in addition to, when the portfolio is created and
configured. As previously noted, in some embodiments, when a
constraint (or constraint group) is added to a portfolio, it may be
applied to all software products in the portfolio and/or to all
users in the portfolio, while in other embodiments, it may be
possible to limit the software products and/or users within the
portfolio to which the constraint applies and/or to apply a
constraint (or constraint group) to a collection of constraints
that is applied on a product or user basis (e.g., regardless of
whether the product or user is included in a given portfolio).
[0240] As previously noted, once a constraint is defined by an IT
administrator of a customer organization, it may be shared using
one of several different constraint sharing mechanisms that are
supported by the enterprise catalog service. These mechanisms may,
for example, allow IT administrators to create constraints for
their own groups and share them across the customer organization at
large so that other IT administrators do not need to recreate them
individually. In one example, a pre-defined constraint may be
shared across product versions. More specifically, each version of
a software product can have constraints associated with it.
However, instead of creating a new constraint each time a new
version of a software product is made available and/or is added to
a portfolio, this constraint sharing mechanism may allow the
product owner to share a constraint between versions. In other
words, in embodiments in which this constraint sharing mechanism is
supported and is selected, once a given constraint has been added
to a specific software product version, that constraint may be
applied automatically (e.g., without user intervention) when and if
the software product is updated to a new version (e.g., by an IT
administrator, through an "auto-update" mechanism, or at the
request of an end user). On the other hand, in embodiments in which
this mechanism is not supported or is not selected, an IT
administrator may need to explicitly add a constraint to the new
version of a software product when the software product is updated
(e.g. the same constraint that was added to the previous version of
the software product or another constraint). Note also that if a
single product (or product version) is included in multiple
portfolios, it may be subject to different constraints in those
portfolios (e.g., it may be subject to different constraints when
it is launched by the users in the respective portfolios).
[0241] In some embodiments, a pre-defined constraint may be shared
across portfolios. For example, if this constraint sharing
mechanism is supported in the enterprise catalog service, a
constraint that was added to one portfolio (e.g., to govern the use
of the software products in the portfolio by the users in that
portfolio) may be shared with a second portfolio (e.g., one that
includes different users, but includes some or all of the same
software products), and the rules included in the constraint may be
enforced when any of the software products that are common between
the two portfolios are launched by the users in the second
portfolio. In other words, this constraint sharing mechanism may
allow an IT administrator to apply the same constraints to software
products (e.g., collections of software products) that are included
in multiple portfolios within the customer organization.
[0242] In some embodiments, a pre-defined constraint may be shared
across service provider customer accounts. For example, if this
constraint sharing mechanism is supported in the enterprise catalog
service, a constraint that was created by one IT administrator
(under a particular service provider customer account) may be
shared with another IT administrator (e.g., one who accesses the
enterprise catalog service through a different service provider
customer account. In some cases, a central IT administrator of a
large customer organization whose members access the enterprise
catalog service through multiple service provider customer accounts
(or sub-accounts) may use this constraint sharing mechanism to
create a constraint, or a set of constraints, that they want to be
applied across the entire organization (e.g. to enforce various
organization-wide product usage policies). For example, through
this mechanism, the central IT administrator may publish
information about, export, or explicitly share constraint objects
so that all other IT administrators in the organization can
discover, import, and/or apply them in their own service provider
accounts (or sub-accounts). Note that in embodiments in which
portfolios can be shared between IT administrators, a corresponding
constraint object may also be shared (one that was defined for, or
previously applied to, the portfolio that is being shared). In
another example, this constraint sharing mechanism may be used to
share best practices between members of the organization or between
members of different organizations. For example, it may be used to
share a standard or default set of rules for common use cases or
for particular types of products, such as a set of rules for a
commonly used software package containing design software, for a
collection of software products commonly used by accountants or
doctors, or for use with the software products contained in a
published portfolio.
[0243] FIGS. 14A-14B illustrate examples of the information
presented through a service provider console of an enterprise
catalog when sharing a constraint according to at least some
embodiments. More specifically, FIG. 14A illustrates information
presented to an IT administrator of a service provider customer by
a GUI 1400 on behalf of the enterprise catalog service, when the IT
administrator elects to share a pre-defined constraint with other
products (e.g., future product versions), portfolios, or service
provider customer accounts. As illustrated in FIG. 14A, in response
to the IT administrator electing to manage constraints, the IT
administrator has been presented with a screen similar to that
depicted in FIG. 9D and described as "Constraints (main)", which
includes a list of the constraints that have been defined by the IT
administrator (or that are otherwise available to be added to
software products/portfolios by the IT administrator, e.g.,
following their importation). Here, the IT administrator is
presented with multiple options for managing constraints, and has
selected "share constraint", and has selected the constraint "Dev.
team X constraint" as the constraint to the shared. Other options
available to the IT administrator include "create constraint", "add
rule", and "delete constraint". After choosing the option "share
constraint" and the constraint "Dev. team X constraint", the IT
administrator has elected to "Select and Continue", as shown near
the bottom right corner of GUI 1400. In response to these
selections, the IT administrator may be presented with a different
view, through which the IT administrator may provide input
specifying the details of the sharing operation.
[0244] FIG. 14B presented by GUI 1400 on behalf of the enterprise
catalog service after the IT administrator has elected to share the
constraint "Dev. team X constraint". Note that the IT administrator
may be authorized to perform this operation (or to initiate
performance of this option pending a subsequent approval process
that is not shown) if the IT administrator is the owner of this
constraint or has been granted permissions to share this
constraint. In this example, the IT administrator has selected an
option to share the constraint identified as "Dev. team X
constraint" with another IT administrator in the same customer
organization, a recipient identified as "East Region Admin", using
text box elements or pull-down menu options. In this example, the
IT administrator has also indicated that the constraint "Dev. team
X constraint" should be shared with future product versions. In
other words, as a result of this sharing exercise, when and if a
new version of a software product with which the constraint "Dev.
team X constraint" is currently associated is updated, the new
version of the software product may inherit this constraint.
[0245] In response to the selections illustrated in FIG. 14B, and
once the IT administrator selects "Continue" at the bottom of the
display, a unique resource identifier for the selected constraint
may be sent to the named recipient (e.g., a notification to that
effect may be sent to the recipient by the enterprise catalog
service through an internal or external messaging utility). In
addition, in response to the IT administrator electing to
"Continue", data may be stored on behalf of the enterprise catalog
service indicating that any new versions of products associated
with constraint "Dev. team X constraint" should also be associated
with constraint. Note that, in embodiments in which an approval is
needed (e.g., from one or managers or other users with approval
authority), selecting "Continue" may not cause the selected sharing
operations to be performed, but may initiate an approval process
for the selected sharing operations. In such embodiments, the
sharing operations may be performed if and when they are approved.
Note that the unique resource identifier for the constraint may
include a unique string that serves as a handle for the constraint
for searching, displaying, or providing access for modifying,
sharing, or importing the constraint (by authorized IT
administrators or other privileged users), in some embodiments.
Also note that, in some embodiments, the unique identifier of the
constraint may not be discoverable or even visible to end users and
IT administrators, but may be an internal identifier that is
created and used by various internal services within the enterprise
service catalog platform.
[0246] As illustrated in this example, other options for constraint
sharing that may be selected from the display shown in FIG. 14B
include a "publish constraint" option, which may make the
constraint name and/or its contents discoverable by entitled users
and user groups following its creation or configuration, an option
to share the constraint directly with a specified product or
portfolio (e.g., a product or portfolio for which the IT
administrator has permissions to add constraints), or an "import
constraint" option, which may be used to import a constraint whose
unique resource identifier was shared with the IT administrator by
another constraint owner. Note that while the example illustrated
in FIG. 14B depicts an embodiment in which the IT administrator can
select one or more of several different constraint sharing
mechanisms through a single administrator console and screen, in
other embodiments, these and/or other different types of sharing
mechanisms may be initiated through different user interfaces (GUI)
and/or from within different administrator consoles.
[0247] One embodiment of a method for sharing constraints is
illustrated by the flow diagram in FIG. 15. As illustrated at 1510,
in this example, the method may include an IT administrator of a
service provider customer organization initiating the sharing of a
pre-defined constraint consisting of one or more rules to be
applied when launching software product(s). As illustrated in this
example, if the IT administrator elects to publish the constraint,
shown as the positive exit from 1520, the method may include making
the name and/or description of the constraint discoverable by IT
administrators and/or end users, as specified by the IT
administrator, as in 1525. For example, in some embodiments, the IT
administrator may make the constraint name and/or description
discoverable only by other members of the customer organization to
which the IT administrator belongs (e.g., end users and IT
administrators in the customer organization), or only to users
having certain roles and/or permissions (e.g., IT administrators or
other privileged members of the customer organization). In other
embodiments, the IT administrator may make the constraint name
and/or description more widely discoverable, including, in some
cases, outside the customer organization. In some embodiments, if
the IT administrator elects to publish the constraint, those who
discover the constraint may submit a request for approval to import
the constraint. In other embodiments, the entire constraint
(including its contents) may be made discoverable, and those who
discover it may be able to import the constraint without needing
any approval.
[0248] As illustrated in this example, if the IT administrator
elects to share the constraint with future product versions, shown
as the positive exit from 1530, the method may include adding the
constraint to a new version of a software product to which it was
previously added (automatically) when the software product is
updated to the new version, as in 1535. If the IT administrator
elects to share the constraint across portfolios, shown as the
positive exit from 1540, the method may include adding the
constraint to another portfolio (e.g., one that contains the same
software products, but different users), as in 1535. In this case,
the rules within the constraint that apply to various software
products within the portfolio may be applied to the corresponding
software products within the portfolio with which the constraint
was shared, although an IT administrator who manages the portfolio
with which the constraint was shared may further configure the
portfolio to specify any rules that are user-specific.
[0249] As illustrated in this example, if the IT administrator
elects to share the constraint across customer accounts (e.g., to
share the constraint with an IT administrator who receives services
under a different service provider account and who may, or may not,
be a member of the same customer organization), shown as the
positive exit from 1550, the method may include communicating the
constraint to an IT administrator who interacts with the enterprise
catalog service under the other service provider account, after
which the recipient may add the constraint to one or more software
products and/or portfolios, as in 1535. Note that after importing
the constraint and applying it to software products and/or
portfolios, the recipient may further constrain the
products/portfolios, in accordance with the goals and policies of
their organization. As illustrated in this example, subsequent to
the constraint being shared using one or more of the mechanisms
illustrated in FIG. 15 and described above (or using another
mechanism for sharing a pre-define constraint on the user of a
software product), the method may include, in response to a request
from an end user, launching a software product with which the
shared constraint has been associated (through any of these
mechanisms) in accordance with any constraints placed on the
software product when it was constructed, the shared constraint,
and any additional constraints added by an IT administrator
subsequent to the sharing, if applicable, as in 1560.
[0250] In some embodiments, when resources (e.g., software products
or portfolios of software products) are made available to users
and/or user groups by an IT administrator (e.g., through a service
provider console), the console component may notify other
components of the system (e.g., various components within the
enterprise catalog service platform, desktop application
fulfillment platform, or resource stack management service), which
may, in turn, initiate the provisioning of the software products or
portfolios for deployment on behalf of various end users. In
addition, when and if a change is made to a portfolio (such as
adding or deleting a product or user, or changing permissions
and/or constraints) by the portfolio owner (e.g., the IT
administrator who created the portfolio) or by another privileged
user that has been granted permissions to edit the portfolio,
notifications may be sent out on a communication feed to the users
in the portfolio and/or to other component and services within the
enterprise catalog service platform, desktop application
fulfillment platform, or resource stack management service (some of
which may be responsible for taking appropriate action and/or
enforcing the changes to the permissions and/or constraints, in
response to the notification). For example, in some embodiments, a
control plane of an application fulfillment platform (or another
component) may provide a variety of portfolio management services,
which may include a portfolio service, a portfolio user service,
and/or a portfolio policy service. However, in different
embodiments, the functionality of these services may be implemented
by a single portfolio management service or by two or more
portfolio management services in other combinations.
[0251] In some embodiments, such portfolio management services may
(collectively) provide information to other components of the
system through two or more communication channels (or communication
feeds). For example, in some embodiments, these services may
provide information over a principal feed and a listing feed. A
listing feed may be used to communicate a notification to one or
more other components in the system each time a software product
(e.g., a desktop application or server product) is added (e.g., by
an IT administrator) to a catalog of products that is managed
through an enterprise catalog service, e.g., in response to the
addition of a line-of-business product that was developed by (or on
behalf of) the company or the acquisition (e.g., by subscription)
and/or ingestion of a product from a third party vendor (e.g., an
independent software provider). Note that, at the time of the
notification, the new product that has been added in the system may
or may not have been assigned to any users or added to any
portfolios, but may be tagged in the system as being associated
with the IT administrator's customer account.
[0252] In some embodiments, a principal feed may be used to
communicate a notification to one or more other components in the
system when a user (which may be referred to as a "principal") is
granted permissions for a resource (e.g., an individual software
product or a portfolio), or when a constraint is modified on the
arc between the resource and the principal to indicate how the
principal is to use the resource. In some embodiments, the
principal feed may indicate that something has changed for the
principal, but it may or may not include detailed information about
the specific change that was made. In such embodiments, portfolio
management services may be queried for a description of the change
for the principal, and/or may be relied on respond to the change
appropriately. For example, the change may be that an entitlement
to a new product was granted to a user, a constraint on a product
was edited for the user, a product was deleted for a user, a
product was deleted from the catalog altogether, a new user was
added, a new resource (e.g., a software product) was added to a
portfolio, or a resource (e.g., a software product) was removed
from a portfolio. In some embodiments, any current operation or
change of constraints on the arc between a principal and a user may
trigger the communication of a notification via the principal feed.
In some embodiments, it may be up to an enterprise catalog service
client (e.g., a desktop application fulfillment platform or
resource stack management service) to respond to a notification
(e.g., to take appropriate action).
[0253] In some embodiments, any end users that are included in a
portfolio (e.g., end users who have been granted permissions to
discover and launch the products in the portfolio) when another
product is added to the portfolio may automatically (or inherently)
be authorized to discover and launch the added product (e.g., they
may immediately gain access to the added product).
[0254] As described herein, there may be several different
mechanisms for sharing a portfolio supported in an enterprise
catalog service, in different embodiments. As described below,
these may include one or more "push" mechanisms, by which a
portfolio owner indicates an intent to share a portfolio and sends
the intended recipient the portfolio key, and/or "pull" mechanisms,
by which portfolio names and/or descriptions are discoverable and
may be selected for import by others (pending approval). For
example, in various embodiments, a portfolio may be published
(e.g., to be made discoverable by other IT administrators in the
organization and/or sub-accounts under same customer account),
explicitly shared with another account (e.g., by adding an identity
for the other account to the portfolio or by notifying the other
account that the portfolio is being shared), or imported by another
account (e.g., in response to a notification received from
portfolio owner, if a request to import a portfolio that has been
discovered is approved). As previously noted, an importer of a
portfolio may not be able to change the contents of the portfolio
or the permissions and constraints that have already been defined
by the portfolio owner, but may be able to further restrict the
permissions/constraints on the products for their end users.
[0255] There may be several different use cases in which the
ability to share portfolios while retaining control over them may
be appropriate, including, but not limited to, the following two
cases: [0256] A large enterprise with a central IT organization may
document and support the proliferation of best practices and/or may
enforce required configurations that are compatible with those best
practices. In such enterprises, a portfolio created under that
central IT account (e.g., a portfolio owned by the central IT
account) can make a portfolio that adheres to the best practices
and required configurations available to subsidiary IT
administrators and end user groups (e.g., functional or regional
teams within the organization). [0257] Under a partner model (e.g.,
under a contracted obligation), members of another organization
(e.g., a system integrator doing work on behalf of a service
provider customer organization), a portfolio owner in the customer
organization may retain control of their work product but may
license the contractor to use the products in the portfolio in the
ways in which the owner has constrained them to be used. In other
words, a portfolio owner can make portfolio available to
contractors or customers outside of their own organization (instead
of or in addition to making it available to end users in their own
organization) through a licensing arrangement or other contractual
agreement.
[0258] In some embodiments, the enterprise catalog service
platforms described herein may support a pay-as-you-go model in
which, for example, customers are billed on a per user per month
basis only for the products they use, and in which an unlimited
number of a customer's own line-of-business applications may be
deployed to its end users, along with any products for which the
customer has procured licenses from the service provider or a
software vendor. The platforms may also allow customers to track
and manage software spending with detailed product and license
usage reporting on a per product basis. In addition, they may allow
customers to minimize up-front capital investment by using
on-demand subscriptions. In some embodiments, the enterprise
catalog service platforms described herein may improve end user
productivity by providing self-service access to curated software
products on-demand.
Illustrative System
[0259] In at least some embodiments, a server that implements some
or all of the techniques for managing and deploying desktop
applications and server products (including those included in
various portfolios) through an enterprise catalog service as
described herein may include a general-purpose computer system that
includes or is configured to access a non-transitory
computer-accessible (e.g., computer-readable) media, such as
computer system 1600 illustrated in FIG. 16. For example, in
various embodiments, any or all of the computer system components
described herein (including, e.g., data center computers and/or
other components on a service provider network that collectively
provide virtual computing services and/or virtual storage services,
virtualized computing resource instances, virtual machines, virtual
machine monitors or hypervisors, and/or virtual desktop instances;
or client computing devices or other components on a client
network) may be implemented using a computer system similar to
computer system 1600 that has been configured to provide the
functionality of those components. In the illustrated embodiment,
computer system 1600 includes one or more processors 1610 coupled
to a system memory 1620 via an input/output (I/O) interface 1630.
Computer system 1600 further includes one or more network
interfaces 1640 coupled to I/O interface 1630. In some embodiments,
network interfaces 1640 may include two or more network interfaces
(including, e.g., one configured for communication between a
virtualized computing resource hosted on the computer system 1600
and its clients, and one configured for communication between a
virtualized computing resource and external resources, computing
systems, data centers, or Internet destinations on networks other
than the provider network and a client network on whose behalf the
virtualized computing resources are hosted. In other embodiments,
network interface(s) 1640 may be a single network interface.
[0260] In various embodiments, computer system 1600 may be a
uniprocessor system including one processor 1610, or a
multiprocessor system including several processors 1610 (e.g., two,
four, eight, or another suitable number). Processors 1610 may be
any suitable processors capable of executing instructions. For
example, in various embodiments, processors 1610 may be
general-purpose or embedded processors implementing any of a
variety of instruction set architectures (ISAs), such as the x86,
PowerPC, SPARC, or MIPS ISAs, or any other suitable ISA. In
multiprocessor systems, each of processors 1610 may commonly, but
not necessarily, implement the same ISA.
[0261] System memory 1620 may be configured to store instructions
and data accessible by processor(s) 1610. In various embodiments,
system memory 1620 may be implemented using any suitable memory
technology, such as static random access memory (SRAM), synchronous
dynamic RAM (SDRAM), nonvolatile/Flash-type memory, or any other
type of memory. In the illustrated embodiment, program instructions
and data implementing one or more desired functions, such as those
methods, techniques, and data described above for managing and
deploying desktop applications and services through an enterprise
catalog service, are shown stored within system memory 1620 as code
1625 and data 1626. For example, data 1626 may include information
representing software products, virtualized application packages,
resource stack templates, the assignment of selected software
products to particular end users and/or user groups, constraints
and/or configuration parameter settings for the selected software
products, users, and catalogs or portfolios, usage data, billing
information, various types of metadata that is maintained for
particular software products, unique resource identifiers for
products and portfolios (e.g., portfolio keys), information about
entities with which constraints have been shared, and/or
information about who a portfolio has been shared with and/or
imported by, and/or any other information usable in managing and
deploying desktop applications and services, any of which may be
stored in any of a variety of data structures or database tables
within memory 1620 on one or more computing nodes of a service
provider system and/or client computing device used in managing and
deploying desktop applications and services through an enterprise
catalog service, as described herein.
[0262] In one embodiment, I/O interface 1630 may be configured to
coordinate I/O traffic between processor 1610, system memory 1620,
and any peripheral devices in the device, including any of network
interface(s) 1640 or other peripheral interfaces. In some
embodiments, I/O interface 1630 may perform any necessary protocol,
timing or other data transformations to convert data signals from
one component (e.g., system memory 1620) into a format suitable for
use by another component (e.g., processor 1610). In some
embodiments, I/O interface 1630 may include support for devices
attached through various types of peripheral buses, such as a
variant of the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus standard
or the Universal Serial Bus (USB) standard, for example. In some
embodiments, the function of I/O interface 1630 may be split into
two or more separate components, such as a north bridge and a south
bridge, for example. Also, in some embodiments some or all of the
functionality of I/O interface 1630, such as an interface to system
memory 1620, may be incorporated directly into processor 1610.
[0263] Network interface(s) 1640 may be configured to allow data to
be exchanged between computer system 1600 and other devices 1660
attached to a network or networks 1650, such as other computer
systems or devices as illustrated in the figures, for example. In
various embodiments, network interface(s) 1640 may support
communication via any suitable wired or wireless general data
networks, such as types of Ethernet network, for example.
Additionally, network interface(s) 1640 may support communication
via telecommunications/telephony networks such as analog voice
networks or digital fiber communications networks, via storage area
networks such as Fibre Channel SANs, or via any other suitable type
of network and/or protocol.
[0264] In some embodiments, system memory 1620 may be one
embodiment of a computer-accessible medium configured to store
program instructions and data as described above for implementing
various embodiments of the techniques for managing and deploying
desktop applications and services through an enterprise catalog
service described herein. However, in other embodiments, program
instructions and/or data may be received, sent or stored upon
different types of computer-accessible media. Generally speaking, a
computer-accessible (e.g., computer-readable) medium may include
non-transitory storage media or memory media such as magnetic or
optical media, e.g., disk or DVD/CD coupled to computer system 1600
via I/O interface 1630. A non-transitory computer-accessible (e.g.,
computer-readable) storage medium may also include any volatile or
non-volatile media such as RAM (e.g. SDRAM, DDR SDRAM, RDRAM, SRAM,
etc.), ROM, etc, that may be included in some embodiments of
computer system 1600 as system memory 1620 or another type of
memory. Further, a computer-accessible medium may include
transmission media or signals such as electrical, electromagnetic,
or digital signals, conveyed via a communication medium such as a
network and/or a wireless link, such as may be implemented via
network interface(s) 1640.
[0265] The various methods as illustrated in the figures and
described herein represent exemplary embodiments of methods. The
methods may be implemented in software, hardware, or a combination
thereof. The order of method may be changed, and various elements
may be added, reordered, combined, omitted, modified, etc.
[0266] Various modifications and changes may be made as would be
obvious to a person skilled in the art having the benefit of this
disclosure. It is intended to embrace all such modifications and
changes and, accordingly, the above description to be regarded in
an illustrative rather than a restrictive sense.
* * * * *