1. A processor-implemented method, comprising: receiving an application descriptor comprising information regarding each of a plurality of components of an application, wherein: each of the plurality of components is associated with one of a plurality of hierarchical tiers of the application, the information in the application descriptor comprises runtime policy information governing execution of the application, and the runtime policy information comprises rules governing visibility of components of the plurality of components of the application to other components of the plurality of components of the application; selecting available computing machine resources for execution of the application based on the information in the application descriptor; installing, on the selected computing machine resources, software resources comprising the application based on the information in the application descriptor; and configuring at least one of the selected computing machine resources and the installed software resources for the execution of the application based on the runtime policy information.