Patent Document ID: 9576048
Application ID: 14315370

Base Claim:
1. A method comprising: carrying out offline functionality-based co-ranking and clustering on a knowledge base, said knowledge base characterizing a heterogeneous information technology services network comprising a plurality of services, a plurality of providers, and a plurality of attributes; storing results of said functionality-based co-ranking and clustering as annotations of said services and said providers in said knowledge base, to obtain an annotated knowledge base; obtaining a service requirement from a customer requiring information technology services; querying said annotated knowledge base, based on said service requirement; and returning to said customer an ordered list of at least given ones of said services, based on said querying, wherein said step of carrying out offline functionality-based co-ranking and clustering on said knowledge base comprises: calculating an initial service clustering for said heterogeneous information technology services network; classifying said providers into a plurality of service clusters; within each of said service clusters, ranking each of said providers; integrating ranking and clustering distances between said providers into a uniform provider distance to obtain updated provider similarity; classifying said services into a plurality of provider clusters; within each of said provider clusters, ranking each of said services; and integrating ranking and clustering distances between said services into a uniform service distance to obtain updated service similarity.

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Claim 5:
5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising providing a system, wherein the system comprises distinct software modules, each of the distinct software modules being embodied on a computer-readable storage medium, and wherein the distinct software modules comprise a knowledge base querying module and a population agent module; wherein: said offline functionality-based co-ranking and clustering on said knowledge base is carried out by said population agent module executing on at least one hardware processor; said storing of said results of said functionality-based co-ranking and clustering is carried out by said population agent module executing on said at least one hardware processor; said obtaining of said service requirement from said customer requiring said information technology services is carried out by said knowledge base querying module executing on said at least one hardware processor; said querying of said annotated knowledge base is carried out by said knowledge base querying module executing on said at least one hardware processor; and said returning to said customer of said ordered list is carried out by said knowledge base querying module executing on said at least one hardware processor.