Patent ID: 8566447

Claim:
A method comprising: creating a futures contract with a first requestor, the futures contract providing the first requestor with a unit of computing capacity to a service for a specific future time period and for a first price, the first price comprising an amount the first requestor is willing to pay to buy the unit of computing capacity; receiving from the first requestor software code and associated data, the reception of the software code and associated data from the first requestor being an indication that the futures contract has been fixed; creating, by one or more computing systems, one or more plans based at least in part on the contracting, each plan comprising: an indication of resources required to provide the unit of computing capacity; and one or more policies for exception handling; scheduling, by the one or more computing systems, execution of the one or more plans using the computing capacity, the scheduling comprising metering demand for an individual application in terms of connection requests over time, load in terms of temperature, load flow, and volume, and capacity in terms of plan; providing the first requestor with an option to buy additional units of computing capacity at a specified future date; receiving from a second requestor after the futures contract has been fixed a bid for at least part of the unit of computing capacity previously contracted to the first requestor, the bid indicating a second price, the second price comprising an amount the second requestor is willing to pay to buy at least part of the unit of computing capacity previously contracted to the first requestor; determining, by the one or more computing systems, that the second price indicated in the bid from the second requestor is higher than the first price; and in response to the determination, allocating by the one or more computing systems to the second requestor the at least part of the computing capacity previously contracted to the first requestor.