1. A method of acquiring data and performing calculations on the data using a provider service, comprising: receiving, at a provider ticket service, a plurality of tickets from one or more clients, each of the tickets including a calculation identifier and a payload, the calculation identifier identifying a calculation to be performed using at least information indicated in the payload of the ticket; for each of the tickets received at the provider ticket service, associating a unique ticket identifier with each of the corresponding tickets; a ticket manager submitting the selected ticket from the provider ticket service to a provider host service; determining which one or more of a plurality of providers is to perform the calculation identified by the calculation identifier of the selected ticket; the provider host service launching at least one provider host thread that invokes or instantiates the one or more providers determined to perform the calculation identified by the calculation identifier of the selected ticket; receiving at the provider ticket service from the provider host service a result of the calculation carried out by the invoked one or more providers; and returning the result to the requesting client associated with the selected ticket.