Patent ID: 8195502

Claim:
A computer program product for generating a plan for an electronic software distribution (“ESD”) of software, the computer program product comprising: one or more computer-readable tangible storage devices and program instructions stored on at least one of the one or more storage devices, the program instructions comprising: program instructions to determine a first bandwidth required to distribute a first software package as one software package, and responsive to user input to reduce bandwidth required to distribute the first software package as one software package, determine a second bandwidth required to distribute the first software package separately as a plurality of separate software packages distributed over a longer period of time than the distribution of the first software package as one software package, the first bandwidth being greater than the second bandwidth; and program instructions to determine a third cost other than bandwidth to distribute the first software package as the plurality of separate software packages, and responsive to user input to reduce the cost to distribute the first software package as the plurality of separate software packages, determine a fourth cost other than bandwidth for distributing the plurality of separate software packages bundled together as one software package, the fourth cost being less than the third cost based on efficiencies associated with distributing a lesser number of software packages.