My API Story: Enabling Vidéotron's major transformation program
Pierre Robitaille, System Architect – Integration and Open API Program Lead at Vidéotron talks to us about how open standards and APIs help Vidéotron to achieve rapid time-to-value as well as a dramatic reduction in capital costs.
Ailis Claassen
14 Apr 2021
My API Story: Enabling Vidéotron's major transformation program
Pierre Robitaille, System Architect – Integration and Open API Program Lead at Vidéotron talks to us about how open standards and APIs help Vidéotron to achieve rapid time-to-value as well as a dramatic reduction in capital costs. Read the related case study here.
Tell us about yourselves and your job
I am in charge of the detailed design of the Open APIs for the Helix program in Vidéotron.
Why do you believe in TM Forum’s Open API program?
Our experience participating in TM Forum’s Open API program has allowed us to build a foundation for our integration work and for our major transformation program – business support system (BSS) Helix implementation – on open standards. Also, having the TM Forum Chief Architect, Pierre Gauthier, living close by in the province of Quebec, Canada, allows us to have many conversations on this subject and keeps us honest on how to implement these standards.
What TM Forum Open APIs are most valuable to your company?
Why did you choose to highlight those APIs?
In August 2019, Vidéotron launched Helix, a new technology platform to revolutionize entertainment. Prior to starting the Helix project we undertook a major enterprise architecture project to define the target architecture. The decision was made to follow industry standards; an open architecture and APIs; and integrated models and views (Frameworkx). Those APIs were part of the initial scope of the Helix project and demonstrated how open standards and APIs can result in rapid time-to-value as well as dramatically reducing capital costs.
How do you use those APIs?
We fully integrated Open API Swagger files into Vidéotron’s Enteprise Architecture tool (Sparx AE) and made Vidéotron-specific API extensions. We are currently working with the TM Forum Open API team and chief architect to extend our use of Open APIs.
By integrating the Open APIs into our tooling we can easily evolve these APIs as the BSS projects need it. By using standard Open APIs we are able to use the same Open API between different BSS systems (Fizz and Helix).
How have you benefited from using these APIs?
The benefits of using the Open APIs for Vidéotron are:
Facilitate integration with external partners
Standardize the integration patterns between the new BSS and core systems
Accelerate the development process via Open APIs
Keep software vendors honest by using industry standards