Patent ID: 7606719

Claim:
A system, comprising: grid computing resources; and a request manager, stored on a computer readable storage medium, configured to: receive a request for results; determine a completion time criterion specified for the request, wherein the completion time criterion defines at least a maximum acceptable time to complete the request; route the request to an appropriate resource of the grid computing resources to perform the request; upon completion of the request by the appropriate resource, determine a total elapsed time since receiving the request; determine whether the total elapsed time is less than the maximum acceptable time to complete the request defined by the completion time criterion; in response to determining that the total elapsed time is less than the maximum acceptable time to complete the request defined by the completion time criterion, delay returning the results to the requesting entity for a period of time; and determine a price to be charged for processing the request based on an amount of time needed to process the request and return the results after the delay.