Patent ID: 8544015

Claim:
A provisioning method for managing a data processing system including a plurality of exploiter entities and a plurality of resources, the data processing system maintaining a repository with system requirements of the plurality of exploiter entities, a set of the plurality of resources being available for assignment to the plurality of exploiter entities, the method including the steps of: detecting a need for at least one of the plurality of exploiter entities of at least one resource; assigning a score to each of the available resources, the score being indicative of an effort required to configure the at least one resource to the system requirements maintained in the repository of the at least one exploiter entity; and selecting at least one available resource according to the assigned score, so that the configuring effort is minimized, wherein each resource has a plurality of properties, each property being assigned a value indicative of the effort required to modify the property according to the requirements of the at least one exploiter entity, wherein the assigned value includes a Resource Value indicative of the business value of the property, and wherein the score includes a value calculated with the following formula F ( V,T )= KV*V+KT*T where V is the Total Resource Value, indicative of the Resource Value of all resource properties, T is the Total Preparation Time, indicative of Preparation Time of all resource properties, KV and KT are respectively predetermined weights of V and T.