A system, including an apparatus and a network configuration manager, for configuring a network based on affinity, comprising: a memory configured to store a set of business rules describing the order of importance of a plurality of applications; a circuit configured to execute an affinity analysis module to receive the set of business rules and a plurality of application requests and to detect affinities between the application requests and an infrastructure of the network based on the set of business rules, wherein affinity is an inherent similarity between a set of applications and the capabilities that a network-based infrastructure provides, and the similarity implies that some elements in the system need to communicate with some other set of specific elements much more than they do with other elements, and the affinity analysis module is configured to determine traffic and application affinities, prioritize them using business rules, and compare their need and operation with a current network utilization; a circuit configured to execute an affinity computation module coupled to the affinity analysis module that determines a new network configuration based on the detected affinities, wherein an output of the affinity computation module comprises candidate changes to an affinity topology database and a non-affinity topology database, and the changes are verified and implemented by the network configuration manager, wherein the network configuration manager generates an appropriate set of commands to reconfigure affected resources in the infrastructure using policy rules; and a circuit configured to execute a network management module to configure the network based on the new network configuration, wherein the policy rules define and change affinity-based relationships and are used to change a weight associated with each edge, which in turn changes the optimum path, and the optimum path is the path that has least costs, and the weight represents the cost of traversing the edge from the first node of the edge to the second node of the edge; wherein the set of business rules are derived from a set of vendor-neutral data models, the data models comprise the policy rules, wherein the policy rules comprise at least one of (i) data and metadata that define a semantics and a behavior of the policy rule, (ii) a set of events that may trigger an evaluation of a condition clause of the policy rule, (iii) an aggregated set of policy conditions, and (iv) an aggregated set of policy actions. a memory configured to store a set of business rules describing the order of importance of a plurality of applications; a circuit configured to execute an affinity analysis module to receive the set of business rules and a plurality of application requests and to detect affinities between the application requests and an infrastructure of the network based on the set of business rules, wherein affinity is an inherent similarity between a set of applications and the capabilities that a network-based infrastructure provides, and the similarity implies that some elements in the system need to communicate with some other set of specific elements much more than they do with other elements, and the affinity analysis module is configured to determine traffic and application affinities, prioritize them using business rules, and compare their need and operation with a current network utilization; a circuit configured to execute an affinity computation module coupled to the affinity analysis module that determines a new network configuration based on the detected affinities, wherein an output of the affinity computation module comprises candidate changes to an affinity topology database and a non-affinity topology database, and the changes are verified and implemented by the network configuration manager, wherein the network configuration manager generates an appropriate set of commands to reconfigure affected resources in the infrastructure using policy rules; and a circuit configured to execute a network management module to configure the network based on the new network configuration, wherein the policy rules define and change affinity-based relationships and are used to change a weight associated with each edge, which in turn changes the optimum path, and the optimum path is the path that has least costs, and the weight represents the cost of traversing the edge from the first node of the edge to the second node of the edge; wherein the set of business rules are derived from a set of vendor-neutral data models, the data models comprise the policy rules, wherein the policy rules comprise at least one of (i) data and metadata that define a semantics and a behavior of the policy rule, (ii) a set of events that may trigger an evaluation of a condition clause of the policy rule, (iii) an aggregated set of policy conditions, and (iv) an aggregated set of policy actions.