Discovery of services in combination with enabling data protection and other workflows

1 . An automatic Software as a Service (SaaS) resource discovery method comprising:

accessing an Identity Provider (IdP) service to initially obtain access credentials for the SaaS resource;

accessing the SaaS resource using the access credentials;

invoking a service-specific discovery method to issue one or more service-specific operations via an API of the SaaS resource for further discovering-resiliency-related data protection attributes specific to the SaaS resource, and wherein such resiliency-related data protection attributes comprise information indicative of one or more of:

a can backup capability,

recovery readiness,

restore configuration, or

inclusion in a backup or restore sequencing group,

and wherein, for a hierarchical SaaS resource having at least two levels, the resiliency-related data protection attributes indicate at which levels the resiliency-related data protection attributes are supported by functions of the SaaS resource itself.

2 . The method of claim 1 wherein the method is triggered either as a scheduled job or when a new SaaS is integrated with the identity service or when initiated by a user or a service.

3 . The method of claim 1 where the identity service is a Single Sign On (SSO) service.

4 . The method of claim 1 wherein the resiliency-related data protection attributes further comprise information specific to whether the SaaS resource includes one or more of a backup method, a default data protection built into the service, recovery resource method, recovery status method, or a recovery configuration method.

5 . The method of claim 1 additionally wherein:

discovering resiliency-related data protection attributes specific to the SaaS resource further includes discovering one or more of hasChildResources, backupSeqGroup, or restoreSeqGroup.

6 . The method of claim 1 wherein

accessing the IdP service obtains access for two or more SaaS resources; and

discovering resiliency-related data protection attributes utilizes a different service-specific discovery method for at least two of the two or more SaaS resources.

7 . An apparatus, comprising:

a hardware processor; and

computer memory holding computer program instructions executed by the hardware processor for Software as a Service (SaaS) resource discovery and data protection configuration, the computer program instructions configured for:

accessing an identity provider (IdP) service to initially obtain access credentials for the SaaS resource;

accessing the SaaS resource using the access credentials; and

invoking a service-specific discovery method to issue one or more service-specific operations via an API of the SaaS resource for discovering resiliency-related data protection attributes specific to the SaaS resource, and wherein such resiliency-related data protection attributes comprise information indicative of one or more of:

a can backup capability,

recovery readiness,

restore configuration, or

inclusion in a backup or restore sequencing group,

and wherein, for a hierarchical SaaS resource having at least two levels, the resiliency-related data protection attributes indicate at which levels the resiliency-related data protection attributes are supported by functions of the SaaS resource itself.

8 . A computer program product in a non-transitory computer readable medium for Software as a Service (SaaS) resource discovery and data protection configuration, the computer program product holding computer program instructions that, when executed by a data processing system, is configured for:

a. accessing an identity provider (IdP) service to initially obtain access credentials for the SaaS resource;

b. accessing the SaaS resource using the access credentials; and

c. invoking a service-specific discovery module to issue one or more service-specific operations via an API of the SaaS resource for further discovering resiliency-related data protection attributes specific to the SaaS resource, and wherein such resiliency-related data protection attributes comprise information indicative of one or more of:

a can backup capability,

recovery readiness,

restore configuration, or

inclusion in a backup or restore sequencing group,

and wherein, for a hierarchical SaaS resource having at least two levels, the resiliency-related data protection attributes indicate at which levels the resiliency-related data protection attributes are supported by functions of the SaaS resource itself.

9 . The computer program product of claim 8 further configured to be triggered either as a scheduled job or when a new SaaS is integrated with the identity service or when initiated by a user or a service.

10 . The computer program product of claim 8 where the identity service is a Single Sign On (SSO) service.

11 . The computer program product of claim 8 wherein the resiliency-related data protection attributes further comprise information specific to whether the SaaS resource includes one or more of a backup method, a default data protection built into the service, recovery resource method, recovery status method, or recovery configuration method.

12 . The computer program product of claim 8 further configured for:

discovering resiliency-related data protection attributes specific to the SaaS resource including discovering one or more of default data resiliency, canBackup, hasChildResources, backupSeqGroup, or restoreSeqGroup.

13 . The computer program product of claim 8 wherein the attributes include a canBackup attribute, the resource is a hierarchical resource having at least two levels, and the canBackup indicates one or more levels of the hierarchy resource for which backup is implemented by the service.

14 . The computer program product of claim 8 further configured for:

accessing the IdP service obtains access for two or more SaaS resources; and

discovering data resiliency attributes utilizes a different service-specific discovery method for at least two of the two or more SaaS resources.

15 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the discovery of SaaS resources is initiated by querying the Identity Provider (IdP) for a list of authenticated SaaS services associated with a tenant identity.

16 . The computer program product of claim 8 , wherein the discovery of SaaS resources is initiated by querying the Identity Provider (IdP) for a list of authenticated SaaS services associated with a tenant identity.