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Ecosystem to ecosystem platforms set to streamline operations

30 Nov 2016
Ecosystem to ecosystem platforms set to streamline operations

Ecosystem to ecosystem platforms set to streamline operations

One surprising outcome of the TM Forum Open Hack program was that the platform provided to the hackers included an incredible suite of capabilities that enabled innovation by using common APIs.

This seeded an idea to take what was there and build it into something much bigger, focused fundamentally on interoperability and portability, using best practices that enable the TM Forum’s Open APIs.

This led to the establishment of a TM Forum Catalyst called the Ecosystem to Ecosystem Platform Catalyst with the goal of demonstrating the diverse application and potential monetization of the APIs leveraging platform-based thinking.
The Catalyst has attracted BT as its champion and includes IBM, Ericson, Infonova, Axiata and Airtel as participants. The Catalyst will aim to demonstrate the full end to end service lifecycle management from partner onboarding to revenue settlement.

All participants of the team will expose their services through REST-based microservices and the implementation will use all relevant TM Forum Open APIs with the intention of reducing overall R&D effort in streamlining any new service.

In all instances the services being exposed are designed to be externally available. There will be no direct reads or direct integration. All communication will be platform to platform and managed using Forum Open APIs.

The Catalyst also aims to demonstrate agility and new business opportunities that can be enabled through the application of platform-based thinking and implementation of Open APIs, through easier creation of reusable services.

The use case chosen to demonstrate this potential is a vending machine example. A vending machine platform provides the core technology enabler essential for a marketplace and therefore much of the learning and technology created in this Catalyst could be reapplied to many different types of marketplace or platform applications.

The Catalyst focuses on three key use case scenarios:

  1. Partner onboarding of suppliers to the vending machine with the main areas to be covered being:



  • Onboarding partners;

  • Partner account creation;

  • Approval notification;

  • Onboarding partner products;

  • Managing accounts.



  1. Payment and settlement by the consumer of the item from the vending machine, charging the customer phone or a digital wallet. After the customer transaction has been successfully completed, the transaction will be recorded for the settlement process.



  1. eSIM activation, whereby the device purchased from the vending machine needs to be enabled before it will work. It is assumed that the activation will occur in near real-time.


It will demonstrate new revenue opportunities for communication service providers in the IoT space through the automated activation of eSIMs. This will be achieved by utilizing the revenue settlement capabilities of the Forum Open APIs for ease of management of the billing process.

The proof points that will support core messages will be:

  • The demonstration itself;

  • The reusability potential of the technology;

  • The time savings in development.


The team will aim to create and demonstrate the first iteration at TM Forum Live! Asia and intend to build on feedback from this event to further expand on the Catalyst for TM Forum Live! in Nice 2017.

Watch this video interview to find out more: