Bal Mukund, Group Vice President, Digital BSS at Comviva, discusses the business benefits of API conformance and how customer demand for Open APIs is evolving.
How Comviva is talking customers’ language with Open APIs
Comviva was an early adopter of TM Forum Open APIs. It is also among the first companies worldwide to achieve diamond level in TM Forum’s Open API conformance certification, which means it is using a standard definition of TM Forum Open APIs across 50 or more of its API implementations.
Inform caught up with Bal Mukund, Group Vice President, Digital BSS at Comviva, to discuss the business benefits of API conformance and how customer demand for Open APIs is evolving.
One of the key advantages of aligning its product portfolio to TM Forum’s Open APIs Comviva is being able to communicate with customers, partners and other vendors using “unified business terms,” explains Mukund.
“Open APIs are so extensive that when we talk to the external world, we can talk in the same language.”
For this reason, “the use of Open APIs is aligned with our product strategy. It helps us with better technical score when we bid for any new opportunities, as well as when working with existing customers.”
In addition, Comviva has aligned with TM Forum’s Open Digital Architecture and SID. “All three together are adding more value to our customers,” according to Mukund.
Rising Open API demand
So far, Comviva has certified conformance with 51 of TM Forum’s Open APIs. One of the trends it is seeing today in the business support systems (BSS) environment, is significant demand for Open APIs related to product catalog management.
“Nowadays all telecom operators are following the philosophy of adding enterprise product catalog (EPC) and all other downstream product/applications where product information required are syncing up automatically with EPC using TMF Open APIs” explains Mukund.
There is also high demand for the TMF629 customer management Open API.
“In almost all our deployments we are by default going with TM Forum’s Open APIs,” states Mukund.
Currently the most requested Open API, however, is the TMF637 for product inventory management.
And, explains Mukund, “the trouble ticket management API is helping in getting the unified omni channel experience to their end customer, so any customers are exposing more and more channels, and using TMF621 to log a ticket or get the status about the ticket.”
Crucially for telcos, Open APIs are also enabling faster systems integration. For example, Comviva was able to use Open APIs to integrate a subscription manager product with an enterprise product catalog in just a couple of weeks.
In the coming months, Comviva plans to add to the list of Open APIs to which to conforms in the areas of billing and charging. It will also work with TM Forum on AI and machine learning Open APIs.
“As telcos are moving towards being techcos they're also becoming technology providers and we see that AI/ML-based APIs are going to get more traction going forward,” explains Mukund.