System and method for implementing a cloud workflow

This application is related to the following commonly-assigned, co-pending applications, each of which is also incorporated herein by reference in its entirety:

1. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/612,807 filed on Nov. 5, 2009, now U.S. Pat. No. 8,065,395 issued on Nov. 22, 2011

2. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/612,818 filed on Nov. 5, 2009;

3. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/612,834 filed on Nov. 5, 2009;

4. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/612,841 filed on Nov. 5, 2009;

5. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/612,882 filed on Nov. 5, 2009;

6. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/612,903 filed on Nov. 5, 2009;

7. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/612,925 filed on Nov. 5, 2009;

8. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/613,077 filed on Nov. 5, 2009;

9. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/613,098 filed on Nov. 5, 2009;

10. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/613,112 filed on Nov. 5, 2009; and 11. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/197,833 filed on Aug. 25, 2008, now U.S. Pat. No. 8,036,396 issued on Oct. 11, 2011.

Cloud computing is a type of computing in which dynamically scalable and typically virtualized resources are provided as services via the Internet. As a result, users need not, and typically do not, possess knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology and/or infrastructure implemented in the cloud. Cloud computing generally incorporates infrastructure as a service (“IaaS”), platform as a service (“PaaS”), and/or software as a service (“SaaS”). In a typical embodiment, cloud computing services provide common applications online, which applications are accessed using a web browser and the software and data for which are stored on servers comprising the cloud.

Cloud computing customers typically do not own or possess the physical infrastructure that hosts their software platform; rather, the infrastructure is leased in some manner from a third-party provider. Cloud computing customers can avoid capital expenditures by paying a provider for only what they use on a utility, or resources consumed, basis or a subscription, or time-based, basis, for example. Sharing computing power and/or storage capacity among multiple lessees has many advantages, including improved utilization rates and an increase in overall computer usage.

Cloud computing and cloud storage are rapidly redefining the landscape of the enterprise data center. Rather than expanding data center capacity to meet processing and storage needs, modern enterprises are expanding into the cloud to obtain needed computing and storage resources for day to day and burst requirements. In order for cloud computing to be successful from the enterprise point of view, utilizing cloud assets must be as transparent as accessing enterprise assets in the data center. Workflow request processing and routing has become an integral part of the modern enterprise wherein rights and privileges can be maintained on an ad hoc or just in time basis. As an employee needs access to assets a workflow is started in which the appropriate permissions and attestations are obtained so that an auditable decision to allow the user access (or disallow the access) is maintained and the appropriate rights and privileges are granted.

One embodiment is a method for implementing a workflow of a first domain, wherein the workflow is implemented as a series of steps to accomplish a workload and wherein at least one of the steps utilizes a process. The method comprises establishing a mutual trust relationship between the first domain and a second domain; wherein one of the steps is authored by the second domain, the method further comprising associating with the step authored by the second domain a digital attestation for enabling the first domain to verify authorship and non-modification thereof.

FIG. 1 illustrates an exemplary IaaS cloud structure such as may be implemented in one embodiment.

FIG. 2 is a flow diagram of one embodiment of a process for implementing a cloud workflow.

To better illustrate the advantages and features of the embodiments, a particular description of several embodiments will be provided with reference to the attached drawings. These drawings, and other embodiments described herein, only illustrate selected aspects of the embodiments and are not intended to limit the scope thereof. Further, despite reference to specific features illustrated in the example embodiments, it will nevertheless be understood that these features are not essential to all embodiments and no limitation of the scope thereof is thereby intended. Any alterations and further modifications in the described embodiments, and any further applications of the principles of the embodiments as described herein are contemplated as would normally occur to one skilled in the art. Furthermore, some items are shown in a simplified form, and inherently include components that are well known in the art. Further still, some items are illustrated as being in direct connection for the sake of simplicity and clarity. Despite the apparent direct connection, it is understood that such illustration does not preclude the existence of intermediate components not otherwise illustrated.

The embodiments described herein provide a mechanism for allowing two or more independent trust domains to participate in a workflow to accomplish some work mechanism where part of the processing and storage may exist in the cloud. The embodiments described herein further provide a mechanism to allow the trust model to extend into the cloud such that the processing and/or storage (hereinafter collectively referred to as “process” or “processes”) required by the workflow can be completely trusted by any of the participating trust environments.

FIG. 1 illustrates an exemplary IaaS cloud structure. As shown in FIG. 1 , the cloud structure includes a hardware layer 100 comprising storage assets 102 , processing assets 104 , and network assets 106 . To facilitate usefulness of the cloud to a variety of enterprises, workloads are sponsored in the cloud as virtual machines possibly accessing virtualized storage and/or virtualized networks. This is accomplished via a virtualization layer 108 . Thus, the hardware layer 100 is insulated from the actual workloads to be sponsored in the cloud at a layer 110 by the virtualization layer 108 hardware, storage, and networking so that the operating system selected by the enterprise can be sponsored on whatever hardware the cloud provider makes available. Having established the hardware and virtualization layers 100 , 108 , the assets 102 , 104 , and 106 are available in a standardized way to workloads hosted in the workload layer 110 , which is the layer the customer typically views as the “cloud”. It will be recognized that some of the workloads sponsored in the cloud, specifically, workloads 111 , are workloads that are germane to the operation of the cloud and may consist of monitoring processes for enabling the cloud provider to monitor the health of the cloud, management processes to enable the cloud provider to ensure that service-level agreements are enforced, and so on.

Enterprises using the cloud are represented by virtualization processes and storage shown as workloads 112 . These processes are typically started by an enterprise via a cloud portal or API utilized by administrative personnel or processes running at the enterprise or in the cloud. A typical cloud provider may be using standard ITIL practices and may utilize a configuration management database (“CMDB”) 114 , which affects the entire cloud infrastructure and which describes the practice and policies used for instantiating virtualized workloads and storage.

In one embodiment, a workflow is designed in a manner well-known in the art and comprises a series of steps that utilize processes to accomplish some workload. Specific types of processes, such as branching, joining, and distributing, for example, are also known in the art. As shown in FIG. 2 , in an illustrative embodiment, a workflow 200 comprises multiple steps 202 A- 202 E, each of which may utilize processes, such as processes 203 A- 203 C, to accomplish a workload. In one embodiment, one or more of the steps 202 A- 202 E may be authored by separate domains having a mutual trust relationship, represented in FIG. 2 by enterprises 204 A and 204 B, respectively comprising first and second trust domains. For example, as shown in FIG. 2 , step 202 D is a part of the workflow 200 accessible by the enterprise 204 A, but is actually authored by a separate trust domain; specifically, the enterprise 204 B, as represented by dashed lines.

In one embodiment, a step that is authored by a separate trust domain, such as the step 202 D, has a digital attestation attached to or otherwise associated with it so that the enterprise 204 A can verify that the step has indeed been authored by the other trust domain (in this case, the enterprise 204 B) and has not been modified. In one embodiment, the steps in the workflow 200 may reference processes that reside in a cloud 206 , such as the process 203 C. In this case, the workflow 200 must be integrated so that such a process is accessible by all of the trust domains, or enterprises 204 A, 204 B, that are participating in the workflow. This can be accomplished through use of mechanisms previously disclosed one or more of the above-noted patents previously incorporated by reference; particularly U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/612,841 filed on Nov. 5, 2009. In brief, access is granted because each process 203 A- 203 C has associated therewith assertions that other trust domains can satisfy because of the knowledge of cryptographic keys or other attestations to which the enterprise has access.

Similarly, storage may be initiated in a portion of the workflow 200 and then moved to the cloud 206 so that other trust domains can have access to that storage to complete the workflow. In this case, the storage is tagged and associated with assertions that require attestations from the other trust domains before those trust domains are granted access. Referring again to FIG. 2 , in step 202 D, the process 203 C is moved to the cloud 206 by the enterprise 204 A in a manner that allows access by the enterprise 204 B so that the step 202 D can be completed.

In one embodiment, the step 202 D is also moved from the enterprise 204 A to either the cloud 206 or to the enterprise 204 B via the cloud 206 . In the first case, the enterprise 204 B processes the step 202 D in the cloud 206 ; in the second case, the step 202 D is processed within the trust domain of the enterprise 204 B and then the resulting information is shared back to the other trust domains (e.g., the enterprise 204 A) either in the cloud 206 or through the cloud 206 or through some secure channel, implementation of which may be as described in one or more of the aforementioned patent applications.

Referring again to FIG. 2 , it will be noted that steps 202 A and 202 B are processed in the first trust domain; i.e., the enterprise 204 A. Upon completion of step 202 B, the workflow 200 splits such that steps 202 C and 202 D are performed in parallel. Step 202 C is processed by the enterprise 204 A, while step 202 D is processed by the enterprise 204 B. Additionally, step 202 D has associated therewith the process 203 C, which is processed in the cloud 206 . As a result, the process 203 C must participate in the trust mechanism so that the enterprise 204 B can utilize the process 203 C without concern. Likewise, storage could be tagged by the enterprise 204 A and thereafter used by the step 202 D within the trust domain of the enterprise 204 B.

As also illustrated in FIG. 2 , another process 210 , as well as storage 212 A, 212 B, are deployed in the cloud 206 ; these can comprise traditional cloud resources that must participate in the trust mechanism between the various trust domains. As further illustrated in FIG. 2 , steps 202 C and 202 D are joined and the joint responses are processed by the step 202 E, which accesses storage in the cloud 206 that was populated by the process 203 C as a result of the step 202 D via the enterprise 204 B.

It will be recognized that, in an alternative embodiment, a persistent and organized data store, such as an Oracle database, may be deployed in the cloud for use by workflows. This alternative embodiment addresses environments in which a substantial amount of processing and storage assets are resident in the cloud and utilized by workflow processes. In such an embodiment, the step 202 D may be unknown to the enterprise 204 A and only a reference from the step 202 B is part of the workflow 200 . In this case, the enterprise 204 B has complete control over the step 202 D returning the result to the step 202 E via some sharing mechanism (such as the storage shown in the cloud or some protocol channel). In this embodiment, the entire workflow 200 may be hosted in the cloud 206 , with all trust domains 204 A, 204 B, having access to the workflow. Each trust domain 204 A, 204 B, may posses rights to all aspects of the workflow 206 or only certain ones of the steps 202 A- 202 E may be tagged so that a given trust domain may edit only the steps tagged in such a manner as to allow access. In another embodiment, only portions of the workflow 200 are hosted in the cloud 206 .

Note that all of the traditional structures of the workflow (such as step timeout and reassignment) are supported by the embodiments described herein. In fact, reassignment may occur across different trust domains because of the way that the trust mechanism is defined across the different trust domains in a manner that will be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art.

It will be recognized that various ones of the elements and/or modules described herein may be implemented using one or more general purpose computers or portions thereof executing software applications designed to perform the functions described or using one or more special purpose computers or portions thereof configured to perform the functions described. The software applications may comprise computer-executable instructions stored on computer-readable media. Additionally, repositories described herein may be implemented using databases or other appropriate storage media. It will be further recognized that domains described herein comprise appropriate hardware for implementing the functions thereof, including, but not limited to, computers and storage devices.

While the preceding description shows and describes one or more embodiments, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that various changes in form and detail may be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the present disclosure. For example, various steps of the described methods may be executed in a different order or executed sequentially, combined, further divided, replaced with alternate steps, or removed entirely. In addition, various functions illustrated in the methods or described elsewhere in the disclosure may be combined to provide additional and/or alternate functions. Therefore, the claims should be interpreted in a broad manner, consistent with the present disclosure.