New Open APIs Speed Digital Transformation For Telcos

Posted by TM Forum

TM Forum, the industry association driving digital transformation through collaboration, added three new APIs to its suite of Open APIs available for industry use. In addition, 17 other Open APIs developed and contributed largely by Amdocs and Orange, have been enhanced with a focus on helping speed digital transformation for service providers. Specifically, these 17 Open APIs improve the functionality for management of customer experience, products and services, and relationships with their partners and suppliers.

Part of the Open Digital Architecture, TM Forum’s suite of 57 REST-based Open APIs are used by more than 9,000 software developers in 1,300 companies worldwide. Developed within TM Forum’s collaboration program over the past three years, the APIs are being used in a range of scenarios, internally enabling businesses to transform their IT and operational agility and customer-centricity, while externally delivering a practical approach to seamless end-to-end management of complex digital services.

“Our members prioritized these 17 Open APIs because of their ability to help drive service providers’ digital transformation plans,” said George Glass, Vice President, Architecture and APIs, TM Forum. “The Open API Collaboration team’s focus has been on the continued improvement and alignment of our APIs to ensure that they are easier to use and work consistently with each other.”

“These new and updated APIs will be used to support order activation sub processes such as customer management, quote management, offer qualification and product ordering, but also process flow to strengthen alignment with the Forum’s Open Digital Architecture principles,” said Ludovic Robert, IT Senior Architect, Orange. “These functions are essential in ensuring service providers can not only transform their network IT for the digital world but also deliver new digital services.”

To help companies self-assess their conformance to the Open APIs, the Forum offers Open API Conformance Certification, and recently published a pilot API adoption assessment report for service providers and vendors to help them understand their progress in implementing TM Forum Open APIs relative to their peers.

Today, 53 of the world’s leading service providers stand behind TM Forum’s Open APIs by having signed the Forum’s Open API Manifesto. These companies vow to use the Open APIs in product applications and collaborate on future development and growth. In May, AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Salesforce and China Telecom signed the manifesto. This month, Chunghwa Telecom added their name to the list.―CT Bureau