How to go from concept to cash in just 18 days

When developing a new product or service, it takes most communications service providers (CSPs) about 18 months to go from conceiving the idea to rolling out the service. But such a lengthy product delivery cycle is not sustainable in a 5G world. At Digital Transformation World on Tuesday, TM Forum CEO Nik Willetts unveiled a set of tools called the TM Forum Open Digital Framework, which can help operators go from concept to cash in just 18 days.
TM Forum’s primary research and Catalyst Program, and builds on the success of the Forum’s established Open APIs and the Frameworx suite of standards. Specifically, it includes:

• Open Digital Architecture (ODA) – an enterprise architecture blueprint, common language and key design principles for modular, cloud-based, open digital platforms that can be orchestrated using AI


• Open APIs – 50+ standardized REST-based to facilitate zero-touch integration and zero-touch partnering


• Data & AI standards – an industry-agreed data model, together with standards maximizing the potential of AI to enhance customer experience and increase operational efficiency


• Reference implementations – a framework for assembling and validating ODA components in the Forum’s Open Digital Lab, fostering the creation of a services marketplace


• Practical guidance – guides and videos showing how the Open Digital Framework can be used to transform the core business and enable new business growth


• Foundational libraries – normalized models providing a common language for business processes (eTOM) and information (SID) that simplifies and de-risks transformation projects

To support digital transformation using these tools and methods, TM Forum provides expert-led education and development services, advisory services, maturity assessments and benchmarking, as well as an online member community.

How can members use the tools?

The goal of the Open Digital Framework is to help service providers increase agility and drastically reduce the development cycle for products and services. The framework considers four phases of a project: Conceive, Design, Realize and Service. The graphic below shows what happens at each stage.

For example, in the Conceive phase, TM Forum provides industry-leading research reports and conferences sharing how to improve agility through transformation and how to prepare for 5G. This is also when Catalyst proofs of concept take shape, providing inspiration and rapid innovation capability.

The Design phase includes a blueprint for standardized, reusable business processes structured as components to ease the migration to a virtualized or cloud-native infrastructure. In addition, a consistent information model simplifies the transfer of data across the architecture and which can leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning. The ODA and Open APIs provide the common language, metrics, processes, data and information requirements which are cloud-ready, and members can use the Open Digital Lab resources to enable rapid innovation.

The Realize phase advocates the new procurement best practices outlined in the Procurement 2020 report. This phase also includes industry-standard interface definitions that simplify and speed up component integration, transformation guides with patterns for the rapid implementation of new, automated 5G-enabled services. A future marketplace for reusable business capabilities is also planned.

Finally, the Service phase delivers:

• Governance best practices to help companies embrace Agile work practices.


• Cloud-native service designs allowing for rapid onboarding of ecosystem partners


• Patterns for AI-driven customer service operations can be leveraged for efficient, service-centric IT.

Much of this work is already available, but the Open Digital Framework helps to organize it and make it more accessible. It is a work in progress and will improve through crowdsourcing. We would like to have your feedback, so please check out the prototype and let us know what you think. If you would like to learn more about the project or how to get involved in the TM Forum Collaboration Community, please contact Andy Tiller.