Patent ID: 7523086

Claim:
A system for securely transporting proprietary customer configuration and availability data from a plurality of separately operating customer servers via a non-secure public server to a secure company operating server such that said company is provided with timely access to said customer configuration and stability data for providing customer support services for said customer servers, said stability data including customer availability data and customer configuration data including a user code for each customer server, said system comprising: (a) first means provided in each customer server including a processor system event log, an application event log and also an availability monitor program which periodically scans said event logs to collect pertinent availability data for determining customer availability, wherein said customer availability for each customer server over a given time interval is determined based on the time during said interval for which the customer server is considered up and running, said first means also providing for transporting the collected availability data for each customer server along with customer configuration data for each server to said non-secure public server; (b) second means for transporting said collected customer availability data along with customer configuration data from said non-secure public server through a firewall to said secure company operating server; (c) said first and second means using said user code for each customer server and other customer configuration data so that each customer is provided with only restricted write access to said public non-secure server and said secure company operating server to protect information from one customer being available to other customers; and (d) third means located in said secure company operating server for processing transported customer availability data to provide results indicative of the availability of each customer server, said processing being initiated in response to transporting of said customer availability data to said secure company operating server; (e) said secure company operating server also including a central proprietary database which receives the results of said processing, said central proprietary database being accessible only to people in said secure company operating server; (f) said abovementioned first and second means operating such that the collecting and transporting of customer availability data from said customer servers and the transporting thereof to said secure company operating server via said non-secure public server is able to function automatically after initial set-up.