US Patent 7793058 Method and apparatus for negotiating revised service level agreements

An application's storage availability is adjusted by noting a storage event occurrence. An occurrence that necessitates a requirements change triggers negotiation, wherein a series of negotiation stages are presented to a storage provider server. For each storage provider response to a transmitted negotiation stage, a determination is made to see if the response is better than the proposal described in the negotiation stage. If so, the application commits the storage changes.