Patent ID: 8578210

Claim:
A non-transitory computer readable storage medium containing instructions that, when executed by a computer, cause the computer to perform: obtaining, from a configuration-information storage unit that stores therein dependencies that are indicative of a user side and a provider side among devices in association with a list of the devices, a dependency that is indicative of the user side and the provider side among devices including a faulty device; creating, based on the obtained dependency among the devices including the faulty device and information about the faulty device, learning data including the dependency and a cause of failure which are associated with each other; generating, based on the created learning data, a solution procedure indicative of a procedure for specifying the cause of failure; and specifying a device serving as the provider side, which is a source, as the cause of failure among devices among which the faulty device has the dependency, based on the solution procedure, wherein the generating includes generating the solution procedure based on the learning data created in a pseudo manner at the creating and previous learning data that indicates a case of a failure that has actually occurred in the past in a configured device and that is not identical to the learning data created in a mechanical manner based on the dependencies of configuration information.