1. A distributed computing system comprising: a software management system storing a plurality of computer-executable software applications, the software management system being in communication with a user system for receiving a selection of one of the plurality of software applications therefrom, wherein the software management system generates an identifier for the selected software application for transmission thereby; and a data management system in communication with the software management system, wherein the data management system includes a data storage system for storing and managing data to be processed; an application acquire mechanism for obtaining the software application from the software management system based on the identifier for the software application received by the application acquire mechanism; a resource manager, interfacing with a resource system containing a plurality of resources, for managing assignment of the plurality of resources to support execution of the software application; and a software processing mechanism for executing the obtained software application with the data using assigned resources from the resource system.