Patent ID: 7065565

Claim:
A method for policy-enabled, contract-based management of a network operational support system that comprises a set of programs designed to support various network management functions, comprising the steps of: in response to a network system state change, receiving one or more conditions that represent the current state of the network system; determining whether native policies within the operational support system address the one or more conditions; in response to determining that the native policies do not address the one or more conditions, comparing the one or more conditions to one or more conditions addressed by one or more policy views of respective one or more policy management systems that are logically separate from the operational support system; based on comparing, determining at least one particular policy management system that addresses the one or more conditions that represent the current state of the network system; requesting a policy view from the at least one particular policy management system, wherein the policy view comprises a set of required policies that address one or more of the conditions that represent the current state of the network system; receiving one or more executable policies, from the at least one particular policy management system, capable of supporting the required policies of the requested policy view, wherein selection of the one or more executable policies is based on a contract that defines one or more criteria that the selected executable policies must satisfy; and implementing the requested policy view by executing the selected executable policies.