User-defined network cloud (“UDNC”) strategic objectives include exploiting the economic advantages of running network functions on general purpose hardware platforms using cloud technology to manage resources elastically based upon business and technical policies. Services can be designed, created, deployed, and managed in near-real time, rather than requiring software development cycles to create or modify services. Enhanced control, orchestration, management, and policy (“ECOMP”) is the framework that provides service creation and operational management of UDNC. ECOMP enables significant reductions in the time and cost required to develop, deploy, operate, and retire products, services, and networks.
Within ECOMP frameworks, policy has emerged as the brain trust that enables dynamic real-time decision making processes. Policy plays a key role in the “feedback instance” domain. A feedback instance typically involves at least two actors, including policy as one of the actors, but in many cases, a feedback instance involves more than two actors. Other common actors might include orchestrators, controllers, network functions, analytic modules, combinations thereof, and the like. In the current market, feedback instances are constructed statically to identify and/or to solve certain known anomalies. This approach will not scale up in the highly virtualized, real-time, and dynamic environment of UDNC.