MEF and TM Forum have completed initial efforts to ensure that both organizations are aligned to use open standard APIs to automate inter-provider services for digital transformation.
This collaboration will help service providers accelerate their transition from operating within limited ecosystems/islands to being integral players in a worldwidefederation of networks supporting on-demand digital services across multiple providers.
MEF’s inter-provider LSO Sonata APIs provide several key benefits:
· MEF LSO Sonata APIs automate business-to-business transactions between service providers for address validation, site queries, product offering qualification, product inventory, quoting, ordering, trouble ticketing, etc. LSO Sonata APIs now aligned with TM Forum APIs enable a broader range of providers to interconnect together in a federated model for on-demand ordering and rapid delivery of services.
· MEF LSO Sonata APIs today enable automation of MEF 3.0 Carrier Ethernet services, with additional work underway to automate connectivity services such as IP broadband, IP MPLS, Dedicated Internet Access, and 5G that underpin SD-WAN and SASE services at the network edge.
· LSO Sonata APIs also enable multinational and large enterprises to buy services in a standardized, automated way when dealing with multiple service providers globally.
· MEF has defined standardized product payload specifications for MEF 3.0 services that allow product catalogues from different providers to commercially inter-operate and dynamically change without the need to alter their base set of LSO Sonata APIs.
TM Forum and MEF have specifically aligned on the following:
· TM Forum is developing Domain Context Specialization Guidelines that enable MEF LSO Sonata APIs to conform to TM Forum Open API standards.
· TM Forum API tooling is now being used by MEF to build the set of LSO Sonata APIs.
· LSO Sonata API product payloads work in alignment with TM Forum API standards using a polymorphic approach.
· The organizations have established a framework for ongoing collaboration.
George Glass, CTO, TM Forum
Open APIs are an important part of integrating partner capabilities and enabling CSPs to establish, operate and monetize platform-based business models. Both MEF and TM Forum recognized that bringing our APIs into alignment was for the good of the industry.
Pascal Menezes, CTO, MEF
Automation of inter-provider services – with currently available and planned LSO APIs – ultimately opens up opportunities to offer enterprise customers on-demand/ dynamic connectivity with coveted global reach.
