Patent ID: 7904561

Claim:
A method for brokering web services, comprising: receiving by a computer hardware device an inquiry containing client requirements for a web service from a client; identifying by the computer hardware device a set of services that meet the client requirements and that are most profitable to a set of service providers; determining by the computer hardware device whether the client meets technical requirements needed to implement each service of the set of services; discarding by the computer hardware device services from the set of services that have technical requirements that the client fails to meet to yield a candidate set of services; returning by the computer hardware device the candidate set of services to the client; evaluating by the computer hardware device a service utility of each of the set of services as a function of a user benefit and a service provider benefit; and calculating by the computer hardware device the service provider benefit as a sum of: a plurality of service resource consumptions times a user assigned value for each service resource consumption.