Patent ID: 8250135

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, by a cloud broker from one of a plurality of cloud management infrastructures, a request for processing resources, each of the plurality of cloud management infrastructures corresponding to one of a plurality of clouds, the cloud broker selectively enabling access to the plurality of clouds, the clouds each comprising segregated computing environments having at least one server for executing tasks and a data store for data persistency attached to the at least one server, the cloud management infrastructures selectively starting and stopping services executed by the corresponding cloud; identifying, by the cloud broker, which of the plurality of clouds coupled to the cloud broker has processing capacity to fulfill the request; enabling, by the cloud broker, direct access by the requesting cloud management infrastructure to at least one of the identified clouds having capacity to fulfill the request; monitoring, by the cloud broker, use of the at least one identified cloud by the cloud management infrastructure that made the request to determine that processing resources necessary to fulfill the request are at a level greater than an amount specified in the request; and enabling, by the cloud broker, access by the requesting cloud management infrastructure to the at least one other identified cloud having capacity to at least partially fulfill the request.