REAL-TIME DETERMINATION OF SOFTWARE INSTALLATION STATUS

1 . A computer-implemented method for real-time determination of software installation status for a plurality of computing devices, the method comprising:

accepting a list of computing devices configured to access a particular network;

receiving an identifier for a software component;

determining installation status for the software component on each computing device in the list in real-time, based on the identifier; and

producing a software installation status report based on the determined installation status.

2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the status report includes status indicator values for each computing device in the list.

3 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the identifier is one or more of:

a file path; or

a file name.

4 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the determining step includes searching through the file system of each computing device in the list of computing devices for the identifier.

5 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the producing step further includes exporting the data of the report to a local computing device file.

6 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the list of computing devices is a list of computing devices connected actively to the network.

7 . The method of claim 6 , wherein the list of computing devices connected actively to the network is generated by testing the network connection of each computing device in the network.

8 . The method of claim 2 , wherein the status indicators include one or more of:

a string verifier;

a time stamp; or

a date stamp.

9 . The method of claim 2 , further comprising selecting one or more of the status indicators for inclusion in the report.

10 . The method of claim 8 , wherein the status indicators are modified by changing their associated values.

11 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the software component is a software patch.

12 . A system for real-time determination of software installation status, the system comprising:

a network, wherein a plurality of computing devices are connected to the network;

an input module configured to accept:

a computing device list including computing devices connected to the network; and

an identifier for a software component in which the installation status is to be determined;

a verification module configured to determine installation status of the software component for each computing device in the list in real-time, based on the identifier; and

an output module configured to produce a software installation status report based on the determined installation status.

13 . The system of claim 12 further comprising a process module configured to:

determine whether a computing device is actively-connected to the network; and

generate an actively-connected computing device list.

14 . The system of claim 12 , wherein the status report includes status indicator values for each computing device.

15 . The system of claim 12 , wherein the identifier is one or more of:

a file path; or

a file name.

16 . The system of claim 12 , wherein the data in the report is exported to a local computing device file.

17 . The system of claim 14 , wherein the status indicators include one or more of:

a string verifier;

a time stamp; or

a date stamp.

18 . The system of claim 14 further comprising selecting one or more of the status indicators for inclusion in the report.

19 . The system of claim 17 , wherein the status indicators are modified by changing their associated values.

20 . The system of claim 12 , wherein the verification module searches through the file system of each computing device of the computing device list for the identifier.

21 . A computer program product stored on a computer readable medium and readable by a computing system and encoding a set of computer instructions for implementing a method for real-time determination of software installation status for a plurality of computing devices, the method comprising:

accepting a list of computing devices configured to access a particular network;

receiving an identifier for a software component;

determining installation status for the software component on each computing device in the list in real time, based on the identifier; and

producing a software installation status report based on the determined installation status.