Patent ID: 8892740

Claim:
An apparatus for provisioning a machine to more optimally assist with a workload of a cloud computing environment comprising one or more machines, the apparatus comprising: at least one processor; and at least one memory device coupled to the at least one processor and storing computer instructions for execution on the at least one processor, the computer instructions causing the at least one processor to: initialize a machine for use in a cloud computing environment; identify a workload associated with the cloud computing environment; identify capabilities of the machine with regard to assisting with the workload; identify applications for potential installation on the machine to assist with the workload; based on the workload, capabilities, and applications, determine a plurality of potential specializations for the machine in assisting with the workload, each specialization having a weight value indicating the specialization's effectiveness in assisting with the workload, the weight value taking into account “down-time” needed to reconfigure the machine for another specialization; dynamically configure the machine with applications associated with the specialization having the largest weight value; and join the machine to the cloud computing environment.