My API story: The value of integration
Greg Tilton, CEO, DGIT Systems discusses the crucial role TM Forum's Open API's have played in diminishing the time, costs and complexities of integration.
04 Oct 2019
My API story: The value of integration
What can a company achieve when the time and cost of integration isn't holding it back anymore? Greg Tilton, CEO, DGIT Systems talks to us about the company's extensive use of TM Forum's Open APIs – which are part of the Forum's Open Digital Framework (ODF) – classing around 15 of them as "highly valuable", particularly for strategic network vendor integration.
Tell us about yourself and your job.
I’m the CEO of DGIT Systems. DGIT provides software for Quote, Order and Bill to telcos, with 70 service provider customers in 18 countries and has won many industry awards, including the TM Forum 2019 Open API Excellence Award. I’m a big believer in the value of standards. My early telco career was heavily focused in telco networks which depend on strong standardization. By the time I founded DGIT, I had discovered TM Forum and become a strong supporter of the work the forum does to get the industry to collaborate and form standards where possible.
Why do you believe in TM Forum’s Open API program?
Our Zero Touch Partnering Catalyst project with TM Forum is showing plug and play partner integration where a service provider can plug a new partner, learn about their services, build an offer for a customer, publish the offer and go live without any IT development! With TM Forum Open APIs in place across the industry, we can focus on innovating and not re-inventing.
What TM Forum Open APIs are most valuable to your company?
Around 15 of the TM Forum Open APIs are highly valuable to DGIT, but to pick the top three it is Entity Catalog, Product & Service Order, Product & Service Inventory.
How have you benefited from using those APIs?
Now that adoption agreement is so strong, TM Forum conformant APIs provide a fantastic way to agree on an interface design in advance of building an interface. We are empowered to propose the API specifications and operations from the TM Forum suite and then our customers typically make it a requirement that a “B” party support this interface.
We have used TM Forum APIs for strategic network vendor integration. For example, with Ciena Blueplanet, a model driven network is integrated through the Telflow catalog so that dynamic behavior is achieved from network through to customer. We have benefited with mutual customers now in four countries and a long list of opportunities.
How do you use those APIs?
We use TM Forum Open APIs for:
Where do you use them?
All our Telflow customers use TM Forum Open APIs. We have customers in Australia, New Zealand, Africa, Middle East and SE Asia. Some of these OpCos are overt in their use and awareness as they are using the APIs for integration with network, partners or internal IT systems. Vodafone New Zealand, Ultra Fast Fibre New Zealand, Telstra and Dark Fiber Africa are great examples of overt users of the TM Forum Open APIs.
To read more from the My API Story series visit our webpage here.
I’m the CEO of DGIT Systems. DGIT provides software for Quote, Order and Bill to telcos, with 70 service provider customers in 18 countries and has won many industry awards, including the TM Forum 2019 Open API Excellence Award. I’m a big believer in the value of standards. My early telco career was heavily focused in telco networks which depend on strong standardization. By the time I founded DGIT, I had discovered TM Forum and become a strong supporter of the work the forum does to get the industry to collaborate and form standards where possible.
Why do you believe in TM Forum’s Open API program?
Because integration is expensive, the cost has been holding our industry back for years. TM Forum’s Open APIs are starting to deliver a future where we don’t have to constantly reinvent the wheel in order to get systems, partners and networks to talk to us.
Our Zero Touch Partnering Catalyst project with TM Forum is showing plug and play partner integration where a service provider can plug a new partner, learn about their services, build an offer for a customer, publish the offer and go live without any IT development! With TM Forum Open APIs in place across the industry, we can focus on innovating and not re-inventing.
What TM Forum Open APIs are most valuable to your company?
Around 15 of the TM Forum Open APIs are highly valuable to DGIT, but to pick the top three it is Entity Catalog, Product & Service Order, Product & Service Inventory.
How have you benefited from using those APIs?
Now that adoption agreement is so strong, TM Forum conformant APIs provide a fantastic way to agree on an interface design in advance of building an interface. We are empowered to propose the API specifications and operations from the TM Forum suite and then our customers typically make it a requirement that a “B” party support this interface.
We have used TM Forum APIs for strategic network vendor integration. For example, with Ciena Blueplanet, a model driven network is integrated through the Telflow catalog so that dynamic behavior is achieved from network through to customer. We have benefited with mutual customers now in four countries and a long list of opportunities.
As a next generation vendor, it can be challenging to get conservative parties to see the value of integration with us. Using TM Forum Open APIs completely resolves this for us. Our customers benefit by becoming easy to partner with and we have new opportunities with our customers’ customers.
How do you use those APIs?
We use TM Forum Open APIs for:
- Integration between Telflow OOTB dynamic portal which provides all the user interfaces with backend services.
- Integration between alternative channels like CRM systems, eCommerce systems, mobile apps and tailored customer portals and Telflow. To support this, we provide an SDK with our dynamic screen rendering and catalog libraries to make channel construction rapid and catalog-driven to support configurable product change through all channels
- Integration with network service orchestrators and NFV/ SDN controllers.
- Integration with Service Provider wholesale partners or OpCos within a telco group.
- Integration with other systems within the service provider IT ecosystem.
Where do you use them?
All our Telflow customers use TM Forum Open APIs. We have customers in Australia, New Zealand, Africa, Middle East and SE Asia. Some of these OpCos are overt in their use and awareness as they are using the APIs for integration with network, partners or internal IT systems. Vodafone New Zealand, Ultra Fast Fibre New Zealand, Telstra and Dark Fiber Africa are great examples of overt users of the TM Forum Open APIs.
To read more from the My API Story series visit our webpage here.
