E-BUSINESS ON-DEMAND FOR DESIGN AUTOMATION TOOLS

Methods, apparatus and articles of manufacture are disclosed for a design automation application to evaluate a design automation task using an on-demand computer network. A requesting entity transmits the design automation task, along with a set of data used for testing, to a drop server box provided by the on-demand computer network. The design automation application is configured to process the design automation task and to prevent it from interfering with, or eavesdropping on, other tasks being executed in the on-demand environment and from interfering with the operation of the on-demand environment itself. The design automation application consumes available grid resources to complete the processing task.