A system comprising: a portability manager , corresponding to instructions executable by a processor, to provide portability instructions to specify a change in deployment of a given application on a cloud infrastructure by updating a policy and/or an application model for deployment of the given application , wherein the application model characterises the given application for deployment on the cloud infrastructure through metadata describing components of the given application , and wherein the policy describes operating context for the given application ; and a deployment manager , corresponding to instructions executable by a processor, to control deployment or lifecycle management of the given application on the cloud infrastructure in response to the portability instructions and based on matching cloud infrastructure resources to execution requirements for the given application , wherein the cloud infrastructure resources are associated with resource metadata that characterises properties of the cloud infrastructure resources, wherein the execution requirements are specified via application metadata associated with the given application , the execution requirements being determined by the deployment manager analyzing the updated policy and/or the application model, wherein matching cloud infrastructure resources to execution requirements for the given application comprises matching application metadata to resource metadata . a portability manager , corresponding to instructions executable by a processor, to provide portability instructions to specify a change in deployment of a given application on a cloud infrastructure by updating a policy and/or an application model for deployment of the given application , wherein the application model characterises the given application for deployment on the cloud infrastructure through metadata describing components of the given application , and wherein the policy describes operating context for the given application ; and wherein the application model characterises the given application for deployment on the cloud infrastructure through metadata describing components of the given application , and wherein the policy describes operating context for the given application ; and a deployment manager , corresponding to instructions executable by a processor, to control deployment or lifecycle management of the given application on the cloud infrastructure in response to the portability instructions and based on matching cloud infrastructure resources to execution requirements for the given application , wherein the cloud infrastructure resources are associated with resource metadata that characterises properties of the cloud infrastructure resources, wherein the execution requirements are specified via application metadata associated with the given application , the execution requirements being determined by the deployment manager analyzing the updated policy and/or the application model, wherein matching cloud infrastructure resources to execution requirements for the given application comprises matching application metadata to resource metadata . wherein the cloud infrastructure resources are associated with resource metadata that characterises properties of the cloud infrastructure resources, wherein the execution requirements are specified via application metadata associated with the given application , the execution requirements being determined by the deployment manager analyzing the updated policy and/or the application model, wherein matching cloud infrastructure resources to execution requirements for the given application comprises matching application metadata to resource metadata . <EOS>