A system and method for providing a service management engine for use with a cloud computing environment. In accordance with an embodiment, enterprise software applications (e.g., Fusion Middleware applications) can be instantiated as services within a cloud platform, where they are then made accessible by other (e.g., customer) applications. In an embodiment, a service management engine (SME), in communication with an orchestration engine, can be used to provision services as one or more different service types, according to a service definition package (SDP). Service types can be instantiated according to the configuration of the cloud platform itself, and the contents of the SDP, including discovering, provisioning, and associating service types with system resources, to address different customer requirements.