time critical workload tasks faces processing deficit application_number US 201414310062 A description as discussed above the ibm system z platform is the preeminent contemporary example of third party provided mainframe computer systems and services thus the following description will be couched in terms relevant to this example however those skilled in the art will appreciate that the present invention could be applied to manage mainframe computer system usage in the case of other computing service providers and particularly those with analogous billing practices referring to fig1 on each logical partition lpar an agent 101 is installed the 101 agent collects lpar usage data also refer to fig5 a and 5 b and sends this data via tcp ip protocol via a network 102 to the policy controller 103 the controller 103 uses the gathered lpar usage information the user defined parameters and the user defined policies to forecast the capacity requirements for the next period also refer to fig2 6 and 7 when changes to the current processing msu capacity settings are indicated the policy controller 103 sends a message to the agent or agents 101 involved again using the network 102 the agent or agents 101 that receive a message involving changes to the current msu capacity settings initiate the changes by setting off a command using the bcpii interface also refer to fig5 b referring to fig2 different policy and parameter definitions are defined using a user interface these definitions include policy definitions 201 also refer to.