Design of services using ai/ml to select virtual network functions and vendors for supplying the virtual network functions

A computer system comprising:

• one or more information handling systems, wherein the one or more information handling systems include:
• a processor;
• a data bus coupled to the processor;
• and
• a non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium embodying computer program code, the non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium being coupled to the data bus;
• wherein the computer program code included in one or more of the information handling systems is executable by the processor of the information handling system so that the information handling system, alone or in combination with other information handling systems, executes operations comprising:
• designing a service with one or more generic virtual network functions (VNFs), wherein the generic VNFs are defined independent of vendor sourcing information;
• using one or more trained machine learning (ML) models to identify VNFs available from VNF vendors that may source one or more VNFs similar to the generic VNFs;
• and
• implementing the Service using VNFs provided by one or more VNF vendors, wherein the VNFs provided by the one or more VNF vendors have network functionality that is generally similar to the one or generic VNFs.

A non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium embodying computer program code, the computer program code comprising computer-executable instructions configured for:

• designing a service with one or more generic virtual network functions (VNFs), wherein the generic VNFs are defined independent of vendor sourcing information;
• using one or more trained machine learning (ML) models to identify VNFs available from VNF vendors that may source one or more VNFs similar to the generic VNFs;
• and
• implementing the Service using VNFs provided by one or more VNF vendors, wherein the VNFs provided by the one or more VNF vendors have network functionality that is generally similar to the one or generic VNFs.