Patent ID: 7464376

Claim:
A method for solution resources determination and provisioning comprising: in a target compute system residing in a network of interconnected compute systems, assigning a unique identifier to a requested solution; receiving a user preference regarding preferred components for solutions; determining a list of possible providers for the requested solution by querying a provider registry; selecting a provider for providing identified components of the requested solution from the list of possible providers; recursively determining additional providers for providing sub-components of the identified components; building a first component tree and a second component tree of identified components and sub-components to achieve the requested solution, wherein the first component tree and the second component tree comprise different identified components and sub-components for the requested solution; selecting the first component tree or the second component tree based on the user preference; storing identifications of the selected provider and the additional providers associated with the selected component tree, along with the identified components and sub-components in a hierarchical data structure in a memory of the target compute system, each of the identified components and sub-components defining a set of required resources; and installing the identified components and sub-components listed in the hierarchical data structure.