Patent ID: 8875131

Claim:
In association with a particular task of developing a specified software component provided by a task requester, wherein the particular task of developing the specified software component is performed by a crowdsourcing process, a method comprising: publishing, by a crowdsourcing server, the particular task of developing the specified software component to providers of software services; receiving, by the crowdsourcing server, bids from the providers of software services to develop the specified software component; selecting, by the crowdsourcing server, participants based on the received bids from the providers of software services to develop the specified software component, wherein each selected participant is qualified to perform the particular task of developing the specified software component; specifying, by the crowdsourcing server, a computing environment that comprises a set of resources required to perform the particular task of developing the specified software component, wherein the computing environment includes an integrated software development environment and a test environment for the specified software component; constructing, by the crowdsourcing server, a virtual machine image that contains each resource of the set of resources of the computing environment required to perform the particular task of developing the specified software component, wherein each selected participant requires specified data processing services to process the virtual machine image to perform the particular task of developing the specified software component, and wherein the specified data processing services are supplied at least in part to at least one of the selected participants by a cloud computing services provider, and wherein the virtual machine image is available to each of the selected participants at a platform operated by the cloud computing services provider; handling, by the crowdsourcing server, contractual matters between the task requester and the selected participants to develop the specified software component; and responsive to the crowdsourcing server receiving agreement on the contractual matters between the task requester and the selected participants to develop the specified software component, making, by the crowdsourcing server, the virtual machine image available to the selected participants.