Patent ID: 7636711

Claim:
A computing device, comprising: a processor; a management agent assessed and controlled by the processor, the management agent to receive data having new or different data types from a data source; one or more modules accessed by the management agent, to process the received data; and the management agent having a first rule to define how the one or more modules are arranged to process the received data, wherein the management agent is to: (i) modify the one or more modules or add a new module to the one or more modules and (ii) modify the first rule or add a new rule to the first rule of the management agent to support a new or different data type received from the data source; wherein the one or more modules are defined by each of the following classes: a data module class to receive data, format the data as data type specific data, and insert the data into a single data stream; a condition module class to receive the single data stream as input, determine whether a pattern, representative of a predefined condition, has occurred, and output a second single data stream; and an action module class to receive either the single data stream or the second single data stream as input and perform a particular action; and a plurality of monitors, accessed by the management agent, to receive data and determine a condition state of the data source, the plurality of monitors include: one or more leaf monitors that receive data and provide a condition state; one or more rollup monitors that receives condition state from other monitors and provides a condition state; one or more hybrid monitors that receives both data and condition states and provides a condition state; and one or more composite monitors composed of two or more of leaf monitors, rollup monitors, and hybrid monitors; wherein the classes and modification of the first rule or the new rule allow extensibility to support new data types without significant modification to the management agent or existing workflow; and wherein the management agent is configured to receive data from other data sources and local entities, wherein the data sources and local entities are local or not local to the computing device.