Patent ID: 8171122

Claim:
A computer apparatus comprising: at least one processor; a memory coupled to the at least one processor; a web services distributed management (WSDM) system executing on the at least one processor managing a plurality of information technology (IT) hardware resources exposed as WSDM resources including printers, databases and servers; standardized visualization metadata received from the IT hardware resources, wherein the standardized visualization metadata is data in a standardized format that comprises data concerning a corresponding of the plurality of IT hardware resource comprising: a graphic data file with a visual image of the IT resource, resource properties, resource operations, metadata to depict relationships of IT hardware resources on a topology map, and metadata of resource states to determine the valid operations and valid parameters for an IT hardware resource at a point in time; and a visualization mechanism that processes the standardized visualization metadata to provide visualization of the IT hardware resources on a management user interface of the WSDM system, wherein the visualization mechanism dynamically updates the visualization of IT hardware resources on the management user interface without requiring code changes to the management user interface.