Patent ID: 8782241
Filing Date: 2014-07-15
Classification: G06F,H04L,Y02D

Abstract:
1. A computer implemented method of assessing whether a data center configuration is suitable for a transition to a cloud computing provider, comprising: communicating, using a processor executing a communications interface, a cloud computing assessment to a user, the cloud computing assessment comprising a plurality of questions related to a data center configuration; receiving, into a memory coupled to the processor, via the communications interface, a plurality of answers from the user, each answer corresponding to a question in the plurality of questions, wherein each answer describes a characteristic of the data center configuration; executing, by the processor, instructions stored in the memory, the instructions: generating a score for each answer, wherein the score corresponds to a suitability of the characteristic described by the answer for a cloud computing transition; receiving a selection of a cloud computing provider from a user; determining a weight value for each question, each weight value corresponding to a significance of the answer to each question to the a cloud computing provider; calculating a total score for the cloud computing assessment, the total score including a highest cloud computing provider score, wherein the total score is based on the score for each answer and the weight value for each question, the calculating comprising: receiving a selection of one or more cloud goals from the user; weighting each of the scores based on the one or more of the cloud goals associated with a profile of the user; identifying the highest cloud computing provider score; determining whether the highest cloud computing provider score satisfies a cloud computing transition criteria where the cloud computing transition criteria comprises a minimum score value, and when the highest cloud computing provider score does not meet the cloud computing transition criteria, notifying the user that the profile is not suitable for a cloud computing transition and notifying the user that at least one characteristic of the data center configuration is not suitable for cloud computing transition, when the highest cloud computing provider score meets the cloud transition criteria, providing the user a description of the cloud computing provider with the highest cloud computing provider score, and an interface for planning a transition strategy for the profile; identifying, by the user, the current configuration of a computing component represented by the profile, a period of time for the transition, and one or more trend values that effect the transition, external values including compute capacity requirements, storage capacity requirements, hardware costs, energy costs, cloud computing costs, and equipment power rating; determining a cloud computing configuration equivalent to the current configuration of the computing component, and generating and providing the transition strategy for the profile to the cloud computing configuration to the user, using the current configuration of the computing component, the equivalent cloud computing configuration, the period of time and the external values; and providing the total score to the user, wherein the total score indicates whether the data center configuration is suitable for a transition to the cloud computing provider.