Application placing and scaling

#Embodiment herein relate generally to applications and specifically to placing and scaling of applications.

#There are a plurality of cloud based computing environment providers on the market today, each of them offering specific services with service levels, targeting specific use cases, groups of clients, vertical and geographic markets. These cloud providers compete with services of traditional IT service providers which are operated typically in on-premise environments of client owned datacenters. While cloud providers seem to have advantages over said company-owned datacenters, they are not under direct control of the client companies and there is a substantial risk of failure to provide agreed service levels. Furthermore, cloud service providers might change their service levels, prices, and service offerings more often than traditional on-premise (owned by the service consumer) information technology providers.

#With the advent of cloud computing the information technology industry has been undergoing structural changes. These changes not only affect information technology companies themselves, but also the industry in general for which information technology has become an essential part of their business operations. IT departments face the need of providing infrastructure faster, driven by their lines of business, internal clients, suppliers and external customers. On the other hand, the pressure on cost effectiveness and quality of service continue to be very high. A high level of security is of utmost importance. Cloud computing environments have to fulfill similar requirements as traditional data centers in this regard, but are perceived to provide services faster and cheaper, and to have virtually endless resources available.

#One or more aspects of the present invention are particularly pointed out and distinctly claimed as examples in the claims at the conclusion of the specification. The foregoing and other objects, features, and advantages of the invention are apparent from the following detailed description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which:

#FIG. 1A depicts a system having a broker, administrator client computer devices, clients and computing environments according to one embodiment;

#FIG. 1B depicts a system having a configuration manager a load balancer, an application provider user interface, and computing environments according to one embodiment;

#System 100 for placing instances of application components between different computing environments is illustrated in FIG. 1A. System 100 can include broker 110 having an associated data repository 108, administrator client computer devices 120A-120Z, clients 130A-130Z, and computing environments 140A-140Z. Broker 110, administrator client computer devices 120A-120Z, clients 130A-130Z, and computing environments 140A-140Z can be in communication with one another via network 180. Network 180 may be a physical network and/or a virtual network. A physical network can be, for example, a physical telecommunications network connecting numerous computer nodes or systems, such as computer servers and computer clients. A virtual network can, for example, combine numerous physical networks or parts thereof into a logical virtual network. In another example, numerous virtual networks can be defined over a single physical network.

#Referring to further aspects of system 100, administrator client computer devices 120A-120Z can be associated to different respective application providers which application providers are desirous of having their applications hosted by computing environments such as computing environments 140A-140Z Administrator client computer devices 120A-120Z can present respective administrator client user interfaces that prompt an administrator user to specify various application definition parameters. An administrator user interface provided by an administrator client computer device can be agnostic of any computing environment. A user interface presented by administrator client computer device 120A-120Z can be absent of any fields that require a user to input any data specific to any particular computing environment.

#Broker 110 can be configured to have features to intelligently place application component groups amongst computing environments 140A-140Z and can have further features to establish a placement ratio for application component groups that have been placed and can further features so that placement of application component groups is dynamically optimized during a deployment period of an application component group.