DETAILED ACTION
Status of Claims
This action is in reply to the application filed on 12/19/2025.
Claims 1, 2, 4, and 8-20 have been amended.
Claims 1-20 are currently pending and have been examined.
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments filed 12/19/2025 with respect to the rejections under 35 USC § 102 have been considered but are moot in view of the new grounds of rejection.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Subramanian et a. (US 2017/0093640 A1) in view of Sha (US 2017/0109190 A1).
Claims 1, 8, and 15:
Subramanian discloses the limitations as shown in the following rejections:
A system comprising: one or more processors; and one or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing instructions which, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform operations (FIG. 1, 9; ¶0017).
deploying a remote agent appliance (discovery connector) in an external environment (customer datacenter/network environment) of a user (¶0036-0039); “discovery connector may be downloaded to, and operated in the customer’s network environment”.
wherein the remote agent appliance comprises a virtual appliance…so that the user is capable of interacting with the remote agent appliance via a local console (connector sign-in/setup wizard) for registration, with all other management operations of the remote agent appliance being orchestrated by a cloud infrastructure (service provider network) (¶0031, 0039, 0042-0049, 0069, 0281) disclosing the user signs into the connector appliance to access a setup wizard interface and bootstrap the connector including configuring a connection to the discovery service to register the connector; wherein all other management operations of the connector appliance are orchestrated using a management console of the service provider network (cloud infrastructure) (¶0030-0034, 0049; FIG. 3). Exemplary quotation: “the connector, which may be a virtual appliance made available for download from the service provider network is installed and run on a virtual machine in the enterprise datacenter. Customers may sign into the connector. Once signed in, the service may bootstrap and personalize the connector with a unique identity, trust certificates, and the configuration information for the different services” (¶0039).
wherein the remote agent appliance comprises a discovery plugin (¶0051-0052) “connector may also provide an agent plugin framework that can serve as a repository for agent software for various provider services delivered as plugins.”
creating an asset source (registrations for collection targets, e.g. vCenter) specifying a location of the external environment from which external assets and associated asset metadata should be discovered (¶0037, 0048, 0069-0074), “an internal service of the service provider that helps in managing the agents that collect data from hosts…may include registration of agents and a connector providing ID’s, service tags and/or configuration values to agents and/or the connector…providing agents and/or a connector with details and the temporary credentials for accessing a data stream”
creating a discovery policy (particularly collection frequency; audit mode) for discovering the external assets within the asset source; generating a discovery job for retrieving the asset metadata for the external assets discovered within the asset source; executing, by the discovery plugin, the discovery job to discover the external assets within the asset source based on the discovery policy (¶0032, 0045, 0049, 0053, 0069, 0276, 0285) disclosing the user can provide instructions configuring the connectors collection behavior such as collection frequency and mode (policy) and commands to start/stop collection (discovery job).
wherein executing the discovery job includes retrieving the asset metadata for the external assets discovered within the asset source and populating an inventory (discovery database) with the asset metadata, and wherein the inventory contains a collection of assets that includes the asset metadata for the external assets (¶0037, 0055, 0131, 0083-0100; FIG. 6).
providing the collection of assets and the associated asset metadata within the inventory to the user (¶0261-0263)
Subramanian does not specifically disclose that the connector virtual appliance is sealed to prevent a remote access of the user and prohibit execution of arbitrary code by the user.
Sha, however, discloses (¶0093, 0141, 0146, 0121, 0131-0135) methods for protecting virtual appliance received from a service provider for execution on a user network, wherein the virtual appliance is sealed (locked down) to prevent a remote access of the user and prohibit execution of arbitrary code (is read-only) by the user. Exemplary quotation:
“the virtual appliance can be locked down to prevent alteration, unauthorized access (¶0141)...the virtual appliances and the hypervisor 504, can be stored in a read-only portion of the physical hardware 506. The portion of the physical hardware 506 can be locked down and sealed...the virtual appliances 502 and the hypervisor cannot be accessed by the users. In some implementations, the physical hardware 506 is partitioned into different portions or zones according to usage, such as a portion for the sealed virtual appliances and hypervisor” (¶0146).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the invention to modify Subramanian to lock down the connector appliances as taught by Sha because applying “locking down to virtual appliances or virtual system image can be used to provide protection for server services and avoid hacker attack…the virtual appliance can be locked down to prevent alteration, unauthorized access, e.g., by hackers, and/or virus infection” (¶0065, 0141).
Claims 2, 9, and 16:
The combination of Subramanian/Sha discloses the limitations as shown in the rejections above. Subramanian further discloses generating the inventory on the cloud infrastructure (service provider network), and wherein the cloud infrastructure is in communication with the remote agent appliance (FIG. 2; ¶0126-0127).
Claims 3, 10, and 17:
The combination of Subramanian/Sha discloses the limitations as shown in the rejections above. Subramanian further discloses wherein the discovery policy is a schedule that identifies a time for when the computing system is to execute the discovery job “customers to optionally configure discovery data collection to change the defaults for data captured and capture frequency” (¶0032)
Claims 4, 11, and 18:
The combination of Subramanian/Sha discloses the limitations as shown in the rejections above. Subramanian further discloses receiving a query from the user regarding the asset metadata; executing the query on the inventory; providing results of the query to the user based on the executing (¶0084, 0131, 0261-0263).
Claims 5, 12, and 19:
The combination of Subramanian/Sha discloses the limitations as shown in the rejections above. Subramanian further discloses in response to generating the asset source, generating, by the computing system, connectors (e.g. Logical Agent Connections between the discovery plugin (discovery connector) and the location (e.g. datastore, server) of the external environment, and wherein the asset metadata is retrieved for the external assets using the connectors (FIG. 1-3; ¶0017-0020, 0036-0037).
Claims 6, 13, and 20:
The combination of Subramanian/Sha discloses the limitations as shown above. Subramanian further discloses generating a migration project based on one or more assets within the collection of assets and the associated asset metadata within the inventory; and executing a migration of the one or more assets to the cloud infrastructure based on the migration project (¶0297-0298, FIG. 7).
Claims 7 and 14:
The combination of Subramanian/Sha discloses the limitations as shown in the rejections above. Subramanian further discloses wherein the providing the collection of assets and the associated asset metadata within the inventory to the user comprises displaying the collection of assets and the associated asset metadata to the user in a graphical user interface (¶0261-0264, 0292).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant’s disclosure:
“AWS Application Discovery Service User Guide” is related to reference Subramanian cited above.
“Unikernels: Library Operating Systems for the Cloud” is directed to single-purpose appliances that are sealed against modification when deployed to a cloud platform.
US 20200351347 A1 describes a cloud inventory service that employs local agents.
US 20110107406 A1 and US 20090094673 A1 are directed to methods for securing virtual appliances.
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry of a general nature or relating to the status of this application or concerning this communication or earlier communications from the Examiner should be directed to Paul Mills whose telephone number is 571-270-5482. The Examiner can normally be reached on Monday-Friday 11:00am-8:00pm. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the Examiner’s supervisor, April Blair can be reached at 571-270-1014.
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/P. M./
Paul Mills
02/04/2026
/APRIL Y BLAIR/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2196