System and method of creating and delivering software

A computerized system for building a custom software configuration comprising:

• a processor;
• a computer readable medium;
• and
• a plurality of computer instructions executed by the processor from the computer readable medium for:
• receiving a desired software configuration;
• surveying a plurality of images of preexisting software configurations and selecting a baseline software configuration similar to the desired software configuration;
• comparing an image of the baseline software configuration with the desired software configuration to determine a set of changes;
• and
• generating an image of the set of changes, the image of the set of changes corresponding to the difference between the baseline software configuration and the desired software configuration.

A machine readable medium having machine readable instructions stored thereon for causing a computer to perform the method comprising:

• receiving a desired software configuration;
• surveying a plurality of images of preexisting software configurations and selecting one of the plurality of images, wherein the selected image corresponds to a baseline software configuration and the baseline software configuration is similar to the desired software configuration;
• comparing the image of the baseline software configuration with the desired software configuration to determine a set of changes to be made to the image of the baseline software configuration, the set of changes corresponding to the difference between the baseline software configuration and the desired software configuration;
• and
• generating an image of the set of changes.

A computerized network for creating and broadcasting a customized software configuration, the computerized network comprising:

• computer means for receiving information corresponding to a desired software configuration for a particular computer system;
• storage means comprising a plurality of available software configurations stored as images;
• image builder means coupled to the computer means and the storage means, the image builder means for receiving the desired software configuration, surveying the storage means to find an image of a software configuration similar to the desired software configurations comparing the image with an image of the desired software configuration to determine the image of a set of changes, incorporating the image of the set of changes with the found image, thus generating an image of the custom software configuration, and storing the image of the custom software configuration on the storage means;
• and
• image server means for receiving the image of the custom software configuration from the storage means and broadcasting the image of the custom software configuration to the particular computer system.

A method of updating a software configuration of a computer system, the method comprising:

• receiving a desired software configuration;
• selecting an image of a preexisting software configuration from a plurality of images of preexisting software configurations, the selected image approximating the desired software configuration;
• comparing the preexisting software configuration corresponding to the selected image with the desired software configuration to determine a set of changes;
• and
• generating an image of the set of changes, the image of the set of changes corresponding to the difference between the preexisting software configuration and the desired software configuration.

A computerized system for building a custom software configuration, the computerized system comprising:

• a processor;
• a storage device accessible to the processor having a plurality of available software configurations stored as images;
• and
• an image builder coupled to the processor and coupled to the storage device, the image builder for receiving a desired software configuration, searching the available software configurations, selecting one of the available software configurations similar to the desired software configuration, ring the image of the selected software configuration with the image desired software configuration, determining required changes such that the selected software configuration combined with the changes yields the desired software configuration and storing the image of the desired software configuration on the storage device.

A computerized method comprising:

• receiving specifics of a computer system;
• receiving a desired software configuration;
• determining if an image of the desired configuration already exists, the image of the desired configuration determined as a function of the specifics and the desired software configuration;
• if the desired configuration already exists, then sending notification that an image is available;
• otherwise,
• selecting an appropriate baseline image from a plurality of baseline images;
• selecting an appropriate delta image from a plurality of delta images, the appropriate baseline image and the appropriate delta image selected such that the combination of the appropriate baseline image and the appropriate delta image yield the image of the desired configuration;
• storing the image of the desired configuration.