Patent ID: 7533086

Claim:
A method for transforming a vendor name of a monitored device, comprising: accessing, by a monitoring device, the monitored device using a first communication protocol, of a plurality of different communication protocols, to obtain information from the monitored device; determining, by the monitoring device, a vendor name of the monitored device based on the information obtained from the monitored device to form a determined vendor name; accessing, by the monitoring device, a database that maps a plurality of vendor names to a single normalized vendor name, wherein a key of the database is one of the plurality of vendor names and the respective value of the key is the single normalized vendor name, wherein the plurality of vendor names are obtained from the plurality of different communication protocols and the single normalized vendor name is used by the plurality of different communication protocols to refer to the monitored device; determining, by the monitoring device using the determined vendor name, a normalized vendor name of the monitored device based on a mapping between the determined vendor name and normalized vendor names in the database, wherein the determined vendor name is used as a key for mapping; and updating the monitoring device with the obtained information, wherein all the plurality of different communication protocols use the determined normalized vendor name of the monitored device as an identifier of the monitored device.