Open APIs – the key transformation enabler for CSPs

Behind all the industry buzz around digitization, customer experience transformation and 5G monetization, there’s still a lingering issue at the core of CSPs’ everyday business that needs attention: Up to 80% of CSPs’ IT budgets are still being spent on system integration and customization1.

This leaves limited resources for innovation and actual IT transformation. This also raises larger questions like:

- Why is the right shift of most CSP business models so slow-paced?

- How do CSPs bridge this gap between traditional IT problems and the latest industry and customer demands?

- How do CSPs evolve and collaborate into the new ecosystem involving hyperscale digital natives?

- What are the best ways to capitalize on new technology waves such as 5G, edge computing, and AI?

The key challenges facing CSP leaders today

The IT estate of most CSPs is too complex and rigid, comprised of monolithic core IT systems and legacy processes and technologies. CSPs’ current IT environment consists of many different application stacks that have been modified over years. These often either have overlapping and redundant functionalities or have gaps in the end-to-end integration of their customer journeys, which operators address through further developments and customizations.

Open APIs and Open Digital Architecture (ODA) solve these problems at their source

The use of open APIs and ODA to connect disparate systems not only protects IT budgets; but also goes to the core of how CSPs can address many of their key functions, including:

• Competing with digital counterparts and catching up with the platform utopia world,
• Evolving further from zero-touch provisioning, and zero-touch automation to zero-touch partnering, enabling a marketplace with simplified and automated cross-platform play,
• Taking demand for digital to an omnichannel personalized experience,
• Evolving business models to best mobilize on the 5G wave,
• And ultimately, ensuring solid revenue, returns on investment, and faster time to market.

What to change, what to change to, and how to change

The challenge of a complex legacy and a siloed IT estate has been common among the majority of CSPs, and so is the need to participate in platform-based digital ecosystems The TMF Open APIs combined with component-based architecture like the ODA are a wise solution for CSPs looking to reduce IT complexity.

TM Forum's Open APIs along with ODA is the futureproof approach designed with an outside-in perspective. It can provide the plug-and-play interoperability of components within their IT systems (and networks), reduce complexity, and enable digitization of customer-facing systems and reduce cost of integration as well as time to market for new services digital services. This while also supporting both existing and new digital services and addressing the implementation of B2B2X digital ecosystems, which will be critical for operating and monetizing 5G and edge computing.

The shift to open API and ODA requires a holistic approach to address key concerns around these key areas:

• Shifting to a centralized approach towards integration: The shift to Open APIs and ODA requires a cultural change to a more centralized integration strategy that puts API first, and is based on industry standards, repeatable frameworks, and processes.
• Initial investment and per API cost: For open API and ODA to create value for the CSP ecosystem, it needs to have a strategic view rather than a tactical project view. A well-defined open API-led integration strategy sets a foundation and builds the repository of integration assets, which are reusable and generate more business value with every project and create a lower per API cost.
• System API reusability: It may be quick to achieve reusability in UX and process layer the legacy system and system APIs which are not that flexible. However, carriers are now innovating their COTS (commercial off-the-shelf products) as well as networks due to initiatives such as SDN, promoted by the Open Networking Foundation.
• Commercial readiness: There is a gap between what carriers are offering and can provide in their immediate, 1–2-year roadmap, and what the OTT players and third-party providers need. What they need is an open API that allows them to reach as many companies as possible and not all CSPs are ready.

Lasting Benefits

Open API-based integration and open digital architecture enable CSPs’ IT estate to become more agile and resilient, which translates into tangible business benefits:

• Reduction in time, from concept to cash for new services, as well as the total cost of ownership.
• Expansion of the service offering, enabling – in a significantly reduced time frame – the ability to gear up to meet shifting markets.
• Enablement of the CSP business to quickly innovate, partner, and create mix-and-match products and services. The result is speed, convenience, and innovation.

In the end, TM Forum Open APIs and ODA are among the most critical weapons a CSP needs in its arsenal today. This means the difference between realizing and squandering the opportunity to monetize innovative 5G services. Most importantly, open APIs will help CSPs evolve and establish themselves as end-to-end service providers.