Patent ID: 8370848

Claim:
A method, comprising: detecting a client request from an application supported by an application services platform including at least one application server to access an external service, the client request including authentication information for authenticating a client executing the application; identifying the client from the authentication; determining whether the client request complies with at least one rule specific to the identified client, including: identifying statistics associated with the client request, wherein the statistics are gathered from tracking previous usage of the external service; gauging an amount of usage of the external service required by the client request, based on the statistics gathered from tracking previous usage of the external service; comparing the amount of usage of the external service gauged to be required by the client request to a predetermined amount of usage of the external service allowed by one of the rules specific to the client; and determining that the client request does not comply with the one of the rules specific to the client when the amount of usage of the external service gauged to be required by the client request exceeds the predetermined amount of usage of the external service allowed by one of the rules specific to the client; and determining that the client request complies with the one of the rules specific to the client when the amount of usage of the external service gauged to be required by the client request does not exceed the predetermined amount of usage of the external service allowed by one of the rules specific to the client; authenticating the client request using the authentication information for determining whether the client sent the client request, by the application services platform; preparing an invocation message to invoke the external service on behalf of the client only in response to a determination based on the authentication that the client sent the client request and the determination that the client request complies with the one of the rules specific to the client, the invocation message including message information; and sending the invocation message to a proxy separate from the at least one application server of the application services platform to cause the message information to be delivered to the external service.