Patent ID: 8527614

Claim:
A system comprising: a software patch management application located on a first side of a firewall, the software patch management application being configured to: generate a software update request identifying at least a particular business office appliance and cause the software update request to be transmitted over a first network and stored on a server located on the first side of the firewall to allow a proxy server located on a second side of the firewall that is different than the first side of the firewall to retrieve the software update request from the server via the firewall and to transmit the software update request to a device management application residing on a second network that is different than the first network and located on the second side of the firewall; the device management application being configured to: receive the software update request from the proxy server, select the particular business office appliance from a plurality of business office appliances located on the second side of the firewall based at least in part on the software update request, invoke a device commands communicator to generate one or more instructions based at least in part on the software update request, and cause the one or more instructions to be processed on the particular business office appliance.