1. A system for managing software services, comprising: one or more microprocessors; a plurality of data collection components in a computing environment with a plurality of virtual machines running on the one or more microprocessors, wherein the plurality of virtual machines are adapted to be deployed with services and applications; and wherein each data collection component operates to use one or more data structures to communicate with a data consumer, wherein each data structure describes metrics to be collected by said data collection component and is capable of containing collected metric values.