METHOD FOR FACILITATING NETWORK EXTERNAL COMPUTING ASSISTANCE

1 . A method for providing pricing information about a potential migration of a network computing task, the method comprising:

providing a provider availability set, wherein the set includes those cloud service providers who are deemed capable of performing the network computing task in lieu of the task being performed by the network;

with respect to those cloud service providers in the availability set, identifying a price qualified set each member of which is a cloud service provider: (a) whose price for performing the task complies with a price acceptability criteria or (b) that has a respective price proposal associated therewith reflecting a price for engaging the cloud service provider to perform the task in lieu of the task being performed by the network, the step of identifying a price qualified set including evaluating selected operational relationships between assets of the network to determine the scope and extent of computing services that would need to be provided by each cloud service provider in the availability set in the event that the respective cloud service provider were to perform the network computing task in lieu of the task being performed by the network; and

displaying the information about each cloud service provider and its pricing via a user interface.

2 .- 20 . (canceled)