Patent ID: 8543686

Claim:
A system of a network service provider comprising: a service server configured to process service requests when received from one or more client terminals, wherein the service requests are associated with one or more computing resources; a resource monitoring unit configured to: monitor the computing resources to determine their availability to process the service requests received at the service server, and generate a resource request for supplementary computing resources from one or more collaborating external network service providers based on a result of the monitoring, wherein the result of the monitoring determines whether the supplementary computing resources are needed to process the service requests; and a resource collaboration unit configured to, in response to the resource request: send a resource negotiation request to the collaborating external network service providers in response to the resource request, receive a resource negotiation response corresponding to the resource negotiation request from each collaborating external network service provider that is a candidate to provide the supplementary computing resources, select at least one collaborating external network service provider for the supplementary computing resources based on the received resource negotiation responses, set a policy between the network service provider and each of the selected at least one collaborating external service providers based on the resource negotiation request and the resource negotiation response, and acquire the supplementary computing resources from the selected at least one of the collaborating external network service providers according to the policy, wherein the service server processes the service requests of the one or more client terminals with the computing resources and the supplementary computing resources wherein the resource collaboration unit sets the policy based on policy information included in the resource negotiation request and the resource negotiation response, wherein the policy information regarding: types of computing resources included in the supplementary computing resources, service level agreements between the network service provider and the selected at least one collaborating external service providers, a list of client terminals authorized to access the network service provider, quality of service information for the service requests, and costs of providing the supplementary computing resources.