A method comprising: receiving a request, at a first time, to integrate an on-demand compute environment into a local compute environment, the on-demand compute environment comprising a plurality of networked compute nodes (124,126) managed by a first management module and the local compute environment comprising a plurality of networked compute nodes (130,132,134) managed by a second management module separate from the first management module; in response to the request, automatically integrating local compute environment information with on-demand compute environment information to make available compute resources from the on-demand compute environment to at least part of the workload submitted to the local compute environment under the local compute environment requirements; based at least in part on the local compute environment information, allocating compute resources in the on-demand compute environment for workload to consume to yield allocated compute resources, and customizing flexible attributes of the allocated compute resources to match first requirements of the request to yield customized compute resources, where customizing the flexible attributes of the allocated compute resources comprises dynamically provisioning an operating system; and receiving a transfer of workload at the on-demand compute environment that was submitted to the local compute environment to yield transferred workload, wherein policies, classes, qualities of service and resource limits associated with the local compute environment information are maintained when processing the transferred workload on the customized compute resources in the on-demand compute environment at the second time, and wherein a period of time between the first time and the second time is governed by the policies. receiving a request, at a first time, to integrate an on-demand compute environment into a local compute environment, the on-demand compute environment comprising a plurality of networked compute nodes (124,126) managed by a first management module and the local compute environment comprising a plurality of networked compute nodes (130,132,134) managed by a second management module separate from the first management module; in response to the request, automatically integrating local compute environment information with on-demand compute environment information to make available compute resources from the on-demand compute environment to at least part of the workload submitted to the local compute environment under the local compute environment requirements; based at least in part on the local compute environment information, allocating compute resources in the on-demand compute environment for workload to consume to yield allocated compute resources, and customizing flexible attributes of the allocated compute resources to match first requirements of the request to yield customized compute resources, where customizing the flexible attributes of the allocated compute resources comprises dynamically provisioning an operating system; and receiving a transfer of workload at the on-demand compute environment that was submitted to the local compute environment to yield transferred workload, wherein policies, classes, qualities of service and resource limits associated with the local compute environment information are maintained when processing the transferred workload on the customized compute resources in the on-demand compute environment at the second time, and wherein a period of time between the first time and the second time is governed by the policies.