Patent ID: 7203746

Claim:
A method of automatically allocating additional hardware resources to a computer having a plurality of hardware resources, said method comprising: monitoring use of selected ones of the plurality of hardware resources by the computer to obtain historical utilization data pertaining to the historical availability to the computer of each monitored hardware resource; establishing a statistical analysis technique specific to each monitored hardware resource; automatically analyzing, according to the statistical analysis technique, the historical utilization data for each monitored hardware resource to arrive at a prediction of a future level of availability of each monitored hardware resource; providing a first signal when the prediction of the future level of availability of each monitored hardware resource fails to meet an availability threshold; automatically executing a new statistical analysis technique based on a second signal; and without user intervention, responding to the first signal by automatically reserving or ordering an additional physical hardware resource that is not in the computer when the first signal is provided and which is to be later manually physically added to the computer after the reserving or placing of an order.