An application manager for enabling multiple applications to share resources in a shared and distributed computing environment. The disclosed system provides for the specification, representation and automatic analysis of resource requirements of applications in a shared and distributed computing environment. The application manager is provided with service specifications for each application, which defines the resource requirements necessary or preferred to run said application (or more precisely, its constituent application components). In addition, the resources may be required to have certain characteristics and constraints may be placed on the required resources. The application manager works in conjunction with a resource supply manager and requests the required resources be supplied for the application. If there are appropriate and sufficient available resources to meet the particular resource requirements, then the resources are allocated, and the application components mapped thereon. The disclosed system can enable the sharing of resources among multiple heterogeneous applications. The systems can allow resource sharing without application source code access or any knowledge of the internal design of the application. Integration of an application can be re-used for other similar applications. Furthermore, the disclosed system enables the dynamic and efficient management of shared resources, providing an agile resource infrastructure adaptive to dynamic changes and failures.