Patent ID: 8176483

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of updating software installed on a computing device, comprising: receiving an incident report from the computing device describing a problem identified by the computing device and involving software installed on the computing device, the incident report including system information describing configuration of the software on the computing device; updating a maintained repository of system information using the received system information, the repository storing system information for a plurality of disparate computing devices; determining at least one update recommendation, wherein at least one update recommendation is based on information from the updated repository and the problem described in the incident report; sending at least one update recommendation to the computing device, the update recommendation including update information pertaining to at least one software update associated with the update recommendation, the update information identifying an estimated time duration for deploying the software update, the estimated time duration based on statistical data from previous deployments of software updates on computing devices in the system, the estimated time duration including one or more time duration phases associated with the update recommendation; and automatically downloading to the computing device the at least one software update associated with the update recommendations in response to a trigger event at the computing device.