{
  "patent_number": "US 10140638",
  "country": "US",
  "title": "How Cloud Services Automatically Switch Providers When One Fails",
  "original_title": "Providing information technology resiliency in a cloud-based services marketplace",
  "summary": "A system that uses conversational AI to understand your reliability needs and automatically switches your cloud service to a backup provider if your current one goes down.",
  "what_it_does": "This patent describes a system that acts as a smart broker for cloud computing services. When a user describes their needs in plain language (like needing high uptime or specific security), the system translates those requirements into a structured graph that maps business rules to technical IT stacks. It then matches these needs against a database of service providers categorized by an ontology—a formal way of organizing concepts like reliability metrics and failure domains. Crucially, the system continuously monitors the connection and, if it detects a failure, automatically migrates the user to a pre-ranked alternative provider without requiring the user to intervene or re-configure their settings.",
  "what_it_does_not_cover": [
    "Does not cover manual switching of cloud providers by a human administrator.",
    "Does not cover systems that lack a conversational interface for initial requirement gathering.",
    "Does not cover basic load balancing that does not use an ontology-based framework for matching resiliency attributes.",
    "Does not cover failure recovery that requires the user to re-input their business requirements."
  ],
  "filed": "2012-12-06",
  "granted": "2018-11-27",
  "expires": null,
  "status": "active",
  "holder": "International Business Machines Corp",
  "holder_url": "https://patentbrief.org/company/international-business-machines-corp",
  "inventors": [
    {
      "name": "Anca Sailer",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/anca-sailer"
    },
    {
      "name": "Rahul P. Akolkar",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/rahul-p-akolkar"
    },
    {
      "name": "Tao Tao",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/tao-tao"
    },
    {
      "name": "Thomas E. Chefalas",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/thomas-e-chefalas"
    },
    {
      "name": "Alla Segal",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/alla-segal"
    },
    {
      "name": "Frank A. Schaffa",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/frank-a-schaffa"
    },
    {
      "name": "Chang-shing Perng",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/chang-shing-perng"
    },
    {
      "name": "Jim A. Laredo",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/jim-a-laredo"
    },
    {
      "name": "Ignacio Silva-Lepe",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/ignacio-silva-lepe"
    }
  ],
  "times_cited": 1,
  "tags": [
    "software",
    "telecommunications",
    "ai_ml"
  ],
  "abstract": "A method for providing a cloud-based service includes receiving information from a customer of the service over a conversational interface, the information identifying a requirement of the customer related to a resiliency of the service, and identifying a service provider who provides the service in a manner that satisfies the requirement. A method for building a knowledge base of cloud-based service providers includes receiving information from a service provider, the information specifying at least one resiliency attribute of the service provider, matching the information to a standardized service descriptor, wherein the service descriptor is indexed within an ontology-based organizational framework that indexes a plurality of service descriptors, and storing the service descriptor for the service provider.",
  "url": "https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/10140638/airbnb-review-system",
  "markdown_url": "https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/10140638/airbnb-review-system/md",
  "google_patents_url": "https://patents.google.com/patent/US10140638",
  "relatedPatents": []
}