Patent ID: 11876683
Assignee: MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC G  H

Claim 14:
15. A computing device used by a virtualized network functions (VNF) delivery system, comprising:
one or more processors;
memory in electronic communication with the one or more processors;
a VNF vendor application programming interface (API) stored in the memory configured for facilitating interactions between the network functions delivery system and a plurality of computing systems respectively associated with a plurality of different VNF vendors;
a mobile network infrastructure API stored in the memory configured for facilitating interactions between the network functions delivery system infrastructure underlying a mobile network comprising one or more of private or public cloud computing infrastructure utilized to implement an access network or core network of the mobile network; and
one or more hardware-based non-transitory computer-readable storage devices having computer-executable instructions stored thereon which, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the computing device to
distribute a template for standardized packaging of VNFs to the plurality of different VNF vendors over the VNF vendor API, the VNFs implementing network functions responsively to deployment in the mobile network;
provide online management tools over the VNF vendor API to enable the VNF vendors to perform management functions for VNFs, the management functions including onboarding VNF packages to the network functions delivery system, each VNF package comprising a VNF and associated artifacts;
using the mobile network infrastructure API, verify that a state of the mobile network meets resource requirements identified by the artifacts associated with a VNF; and
in response to the verification, provide a VNF package over the mobile network infrastructure API to an NFV (network functions virtualization) management and orchestration (MANO) system in the mobile network to enable allocation of virtualized resources in the mobile network to support deployed VNFs.