ROBUST SERVICE DEPLOYMENT

A method, system and program product for deploying a service on a network comprising a plurality of network resources, the method comprising providing an actual network model comprising network resources and the configurations of the network resources; providing a computer-implemented network configuration management system controlling the actual network resource configurations in the actual model; providing a service description comprising network resource configuration information for implementing the service on specific network resources; selecting a set of available network resources for deploying the service in the network based on the service description; reserving available network resources for deploying the service in an off-line version of the actual network model, the off-line version including updated network resource configurations to reflect the changes to the configurations of the actual network resources triggered by the deployment of the service; and deploying the service by updating the actual network model using the off-line version.