Achieving stateful application software service behavior in distributed stateless systems

A resource manager service, system, apparatus and method manages resources for a user group of at least one user by utilizing a resource adapter. The resource adapter serves as a smart proxy to mimic the user of a desktop software application preserving the interaction model with the application. Embodiments of the invention allow integration of desktop software in a distributed enterprise system, as a service, without requiring non-trivial modifications to the application code or to alter its workflows in any material way. A resource manager service, system, apparatus and method treat instances of the resource adapters, smart proxies, as finite but reusable resources that can be allocated and "bound" to a given user for an unspecified duration.