Dynamically organizing cloud computing resources to facilitate discovery

A system for organizing cloud computing resources, comprising:

• resource cataloging hardware on which a catalog of different cloud computing resource providers and their cloud computing resources is stored;
• a knowledge base of types of cloud computing resources storing semantic descriptors of the types, their attributes including relations among cloud computing resources, taxonomy of their values, and actions that are configured to be performed based on the types and the capabilities of the cloud computing resource providers of the cloud computing resources, wherein the semantic descriptors are associated with numeric weights or qualitative rankings to assist in detection and scoring of the types;
• and
• user tools and backend hardware configured to dynamically update the catalog and the knowledge base to refresh pieces of information pertaining to the different cloud computing resource providers, semantic descriptors of cloud computing resources, types, their attributes, and the taxonomy of their values so as to inventory cloud computing resources that are available on-demand over the Internet,
• wherein the backend hardware provides an application programming interface for semantic search functionality for semantic search and discovery of the cloud computing resources and cloud computing resource provisioning and management functionality, and wherein the user tools include a user interface that exposes functionality for semantic search of the dynamically updated catalog and knowledge base by one or more users, and functionality for cloud computing resource provisioning and management.

A computer-readable medium, which is non-transitory, on which computer-executable instructions are stored to implement a method for organizing cloud computing resources, comprising:

• creating a catalog of different cloud computing resource providers and their cloud computing resources that are available on-demand over the Internet;
• creating a knowledge base of types of cloud computing resources storing semantic descriptors of the types, their attributes including relations among cloud computing resources, a taxonomy of their values, and actions that are configured to be performed based on the types and the capabilities of the cloud computing resource providers of the cloud computing resources;
• associating the semantic descriptors with numeric weights or qualitative rankings to assist in detection and scoring of the types;
• dynamically updating the catalog and the knowledge base to refresh pieces of information pertaining to the different cloud computing resource providers, semantic descriptors of cloud computing resources, types, their attributes, and the taxonomy of their values so as to inventory cloud computing resources that are available on-demand over the Internet;
• providing an application programming interface for semantic search functionality for semantic search and discovery of the cloud computing resources and cloud computing resource provisioning and management functionality;
• and
• providing a user interface to one or more users, wherein the user interface exposes functionality for semantic search of the dynamically updated catalog and knowledge base by the one or more users, and functionality for cloud computing resource provisioning and management.