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What's driving Open API adoption?

APIs are vital in every digital business, and for CSPs they could mean the difference between realizing and squandering the opportunity to monetize innovative 5G services. The excerpt from our recent report explains the drivers for using TM Forum Open APIs.

Dawn BushausDawn Bushaus
01 Mar 2021
What's driving Open API adoption?

What's driving Open API adoption?

Our new report, How to lead in the Open API economy, explains how companies are using the TM Forum Open APIs and explores the challenges to adopting them. In this excerpt, we look at why companies are turning to the Open APIs and how the Open Digital Architecture (ODA) makes them more powerful. This companion piece provides a creative explanation of the ODA from the perspective of Orange’s Laurent Leboucher, who compares today’s telco IT architecture to a Jackson Pollock painting. To find out more about the history of the Open APIs, check out the first installment in this series.

APIs are vital in every digital business, and for communications service providers (CSPs) they could mean the difference between realizing and squandering the opportunity to monetize innovative 5G services. In short, APIs are simple coding instructions that allow disparate software systems to communicate without the need for costly, time-consuming integration.

CSPs are adopting Open APIs because they enable plug-and-play interoperability of components within their IT systems and networks. Using the interfaces dramatically reduces the cost of integration and time to market for new services, and they allow operators to expose network and IT capabilities to partners using platform-enabled business models. These changes are critical for enabling CSPs to experiment and deliver new 5G services to enterprises and consumers.

Most important drivers


In the survey we conducted to support the report, we gave CSPs and suppliers lists of potential reasons for adopting the Open APIs and asked them to rate each on a scale from very important to not important at all. The graphics below show the percentage of respondents who rated the drivers as very or moderately important.
It is not surprising that the biggest drivers are reducing costs and complexity. Many operators report spending about 80% of their IT budgets on integration and customization, which leaves only 20% for innovation. They are turning to Open APIs and open architectures to flip this ratio.

Many CSPs are “wrapping” legacy systems so that they can move them to a cloud environment. Only a few are using the Open APIs to create platform businesses with external partners, but many plan to as a second phase of digital transformation. We’ll discuss these sets of drivers in more detail in upcoming report excerpts.

A new architecture


The Open APIs are useful on their own, but they become much more powerful when used in conjunction with a modern, component-based architecture like the Open Digital Architecture (ODA). A component-based approach gives CSPs the ability to evolve incrementally to a fully automated, cloud native operations environment that relies on analytics and AI to deliver zero-touch services.

TM Forum launched the ODA Project in February 2018. Just as the Open APIs aim to be the de facto standard for telecoms interfaces, ODA aims to be the de facto standard for open digital platforms.

CSPs have led development of the architecture with a primary goal of reducing the time it takes to go from concept to cash when creating new services. They want to be able to do this in days or even hours, as digital native service providers do. But today it often takes a year or more for a telco to develop and monetize a new service because of requirements to build connections many times over between customer management, service management, and ordering and billing systems across several lines of business.

Accelerating progress


As noted, CSPs collaborated early on to standardize exposure of services through the Open APIs. Then TM Forum changed a bylaw so that members could co-develop the Open APIs under standard open source licensing terms, i.e. Apache 2.0. Now Orange and Vodafone Group are leading the charge to create softwarized standards that CSPs can use to test ODA concepts.

Originally developed as a prototype of one part of ODA called the Business Operating System (BOS), the scope of this work has expanded to encompass development of a complete ODA Reference Implementation. During a Catalyst proof of concept, the team developed the ODA Canvas, which is a software-defined blueprint for a cloud native operating environment.

In December 2020, TM Forum launched the ODA Component Accelerator and a new legal entity called tmf.codes so that members can co-develop shared software code for the ODA Reference Implementation under Apache 2.0. The goal is to be able to test suppliers’ software solutions for interoperability.

The graphic below illustrates an ODA component, which is an independently deployable piece of software, typically built out of one or more microservices. Components have an “envelope” that provides metadata to describe its core function and specify which Open APIs it exposes or depends upon.
“The point of the ODA Component Accelerator is to build a reference implementation with real components which can be used as a platform for testing commercial products,” says Andy Tiller, TM Forum’s Executive Vice President, Collaboration & Innovation. “So, whether you’re participating in the project or not, you’ll be able to come along as a commercial vendor with your component and plug it into the reference implementation in the Open Digital Lab or a CSPs’ environment. Service providers will then be able to prove to their own satisfaction that their vendors are fully compliant with the ODA and Open APIs.”

These changes pave the way for CSPs and their partners to participate in all kinds of software marketplaces, as buyers of IT solutions and sellers of products and services to partners and customers.

You can learn more about the history of the ODA in this report:
You can learn more about TM Forum’s vision for marketplaces by clicking on the cover below. To get involved in collaboration on the Open APIs and ODA, contact TM Forum CTO George Glass.
In upcoming articles, we’ll look at the status of Open API adoption and examples of how CSPs are using the interfaces, but you don’t have to wait to read about it.

Download the full report: