Patent ID: 8769040

Claim:
A service providing system comprising: a plurality of virtual machines, each of which provides one or more services; a virtual machine system unit which controls the plurality of virtual machines and classifies client terminals which request a service into groups; a service transfer management table configured to store entries to identify a virtual machine in association with the service and at least one of the groups; and a virtual network switch configured to try to identify, in response to a request of the service from a client terminal of one of the groups, by the service transfer management table, the virtual machine which provides the service for the one of the groups, and configured to transfer the request of the service to the identified virtual machine, wherein: the virtual network switch executes a virtual machine start-up command to start up a virtual machine when the identification fails; and each entry of the service transfer management table is added or deleted in accordance with start-up of the virtual machine that is started when identification fails or with termination of the identified virtual machine, respectively.