This volume provides a comprehensive analysis of the concepts, designs and implementations of one virtual computing environment. The work features the Adaptive Distributed Virtual Computing Environment (ADViCE), which was developed to create an open programmable computing environment that supports the development, execution, visualization, and experimentation with large-scale parallel and distributed applications. ADViCE's objective is an important step towards the ultimate goal of implementing a real virtual computing environment that provides ubiquitous open computing services in an analogous way to the services offered by telephone and electrical (utility) companies. The material includes coverage of computing technology, metacomputing systems, scheduling algorithms, experimental results, prediction algorithms for real-time execution time with/without tuning functions, and more. This book is considered a starting reference work for researchers in parallel and distributed computing, supercomputing and networking professionals.