Patent ID: 8005991

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving authentication information from a client system, the authentication information indicative of a request for a first set of virtual machine images; determining the first set of virtual machine images associated with a user or a group of users based on the authentication information; communicating a list of virtual machine images to the client system via a network in response to determining the first set of virtual machine images, the list of virtual machine images indicative of each virtual machine image of the first set of virtual machine images; receiving selection information from the client system in response to communicating the list of virtual machine images, the selection information indicative of a first virtual machine image of the first set of virtual machine images, the first virtual machine image includes a plurality of image segments, each of the plurality of image segments can be executed independently at the client system; identifying a subset of the plurality of image segments; and communicating the subset of image segments to the client system in response to receiving the selection information.