Abstract: A system for identifying networked equipment, capable of running a computer software application, that satisfies a user selected trade-off between usage cost and performance. The system maintains a store of user selected maximum usage cost and information corresponding to a trade-off between networked equipment usage cost and performance, and maintains a store of currently available capability information associated with the networked equipment, and a networked controller operates on the stored information to identify one or more instances of the equipment that satisfies the trade-off by determining a total cost-performance factor value for each a plurality of the networked equipment.

Abstract: A system for identifying networked equipment on which to operate a computer software application has a store of currently available capability information associated with equipment connected to a communication network, a store of software application operational requirement information and an intent driven controller. The controller operates to identify networked equipment on which to run the software application by comparing application requirement information to currently available capability information associated with instances of the networked equipment looking for capability that satisfies the operational requirements.