Patent ID: 8392933

Claim:
A service platform architecture that operates on a device, the service platform architecture comprising: a processor; and a memory connected to the processor, the memory comprising: an operating system comprising device drivers for system resources; an abstraction layer between the device drivers and external services, the abstraction layer comprising: core functions that communicate with the device drivers; and helper functions that communicate with the core functions and that comprise an exposed consistent application programming interface (API) abstracted from the operating system and device drivers, the API operable to translate function calls from the external services to the core functions and operating system, and thereby to the device drivers, wherein each of the device drivers is configured to interface the abstraction layer to hardware of the device, wherein the external services correspond to code that resides on the device that communicates with the consistent API of the abstraction layer to control the hardware, and wherein code that defines a given external service is written in a hardware and device driver independent manner such that a same service may reside on a second device that includes different hardware and device drivers for implementing functions associated with the external service; a service management service among the external services, the service management service operable to manage the external services according to configuration messages received from a remote management system; and a communication interface operable to receive the configuration messages from the remote management system and communicate the configuration messages to the service management service.