Patent ID: 8448237

Claim:
A system comprising: a centralized service repository configured to store service policy information related to a plurality of service policies, wherein the plurality of service policies include entitlement, routing, workload management, logging, protocol bridging, format translation, filtering, and business process management; a plurality of service routers configured to route a plurality of service requests to network components based on the routing policies stored within the centralized service repository, wherein at least one of the routing policies relates to routing the plurality of service requests through at least one firewall that connects a first network with a second network; a plurality of service gateways configured to perform a plurality of service processing tasks related to entitlement, routing, workload management, logging, protocol bridging, format translation, filtering, and business process management by accessing the service policy information stored within the centralized service repository, wherein the plurality of service gateways includes at least one appliance configured to process Extensible Markup Language (XML) files transmitted by the centralized service repository, wherein at least one of the plurality of service gateways is located in the first network and at least another one of the plurality of service gateways is located in the second network, a plurality of service domain name system (DNS) servers configured to dynamically translate service uniform resource locators (URLs) into service addresses by accessing the service policy information stored within the centralized service repository; a plurality of user terminals configured to transmit the plurality of service requests to at least one of the plurality of service routers and the plurality of service DNS servers; and a plurality of service providers configured to provide access to a plurality of privileged resources within the second network.