Patent ID: 8126914

Claim:
A method, comprising: providing a catalog at a coordinator system indicating a plurality of resource managers and at least one service offered by the resource managers; providing, at the coordinator system, resource manager information indicating resource availability information for resource managers offering at least one service; receiving, at the coordinator system, a request for a data service, to store or retrieve an object, from a subscriber, wherein the coordinator system communicates with the resource manager and the subscriber over a network; processing, by the coordinator system, the catalog to identify resource managers publishing the requested data service; determining, by the coordinator system, from a plurality of rules the rules that are applicable to the request for the requested data service; using, by the coordinator system, an inference engine to process the resource manager information to determine at least one identified resource manager publishing the requested service that also satisfies the rules that are applicable to the service request, wherein at least one of the plurality of rules applicable to the service request comprises: a business parameter concerning an attribute of the service request that is not related to the technical performance of the resource manager that must be satisfied by the subscriber initiating the request; and a parameter concerning properties of the object subject to the service request, wherein the properties of the object include at least one of a set of properties including object access frequency, object size, and object compression, wherein the resource manager selected by the rule is based on the properties of the object; determining at least one identified resource manager that has resource manager information that satisfies the parameter concerning the properties of the object; and determining whether the subscriber satisfies the business parameter, wherein access to one of the at least one determined resource manager publishing the service is permitted in response to determining that the subscriber satisfies the quality of service business parameter.