We can’t hope to be happy until we’re all Openly API
Telecoms industry association the TM Forum has reached a key milestone in its journey to move every stakeholder in this industry to its Open API programme. It reports that there are now 67 Open APIs supplied by mobile operators and other stakeholders. Having already achieved industry-wide adoption with 565,000 downloads worldwide, Open API’s membership now boasts more than 470 conformance-certified implementations by 50 leading lights in the telecoms industry. These include leading top mobile network operators Verizon, Bell Canada and Reliance Jio, who now top the Open API certification leaderboard.
With TM Forum Open APIs now widely adopted and conformance certification spreading, the Forum today announced three new initiatives to drive the next level of industry-wide Open API standardization and conformance: Real World Certifications, Domain Context Specialization (DCS) and Asynchronous APIs and OAS 3.0 support.
The first initiative, Real World Certification, independently validates conformance of Open APIs for live implementations, giving service providers and their partners greater confidence and transparency. Verizon, Bell Canada and Jio are the first to achieve the new certification, while Tecnotree and MTN are the first to achieve a joint certification.
Secondly, DCS simplifies deployments by creating standard payloads whenever it is worth doing so. This ensures a single Open API can carry different standard payloads, which drastically reduces the need for technology-specific management and orchestration APIs.
While the extensible design of Open APIs allows the same API to be used for a multitude of use cases, standardising Open API payloads simplifies deployment for specific applications such as 5G slicing and wholesale access. Standards development organisations will also be able to use this approach, known as Domain Context Specialisation (DCS), to develop application-specific payloads using the TM Forum Open APIs framework. “TM Forum Open APIs eliminate the need for custom integration, and by design they’re extensible, so the same base API can be used for any use case,” said George Glass, CTO of TM Forum.
Finally, Open APIs are continuously evolving to support the latest technologies and architectural needs, said Scott Petty, who is both Vodafone’s Chief Digital and Information Officer and the TM Forum Board lead for ODA. “We now use Open APIs for every interaction. We embrace cloud-native approaches to every software release and we commit to ethical data analytics and AI practices across our organization. Backed by a large team of API experts, we can re-use the best software and launch the best applications at the same time across multiple countries to give our customers, developers and strategic partners universal support.”
New upgrades from Forum member professionals working in TM Forum Labs include the release of the first 10 V5 APIs, which support the latest OAS 3.0 specifications. These create a simplified structure that supports greater reusability and improved security. They also create the first Asynchronous (Async) Open APIs, which are a key requirement TM Forum’s Open Digital Architecture as it evolves to be an event-driven, AI-ready architecture. DTW 2022 is in Copenhagen this week and will showcase the breadth and depth of Open APIs use across the industry.