Open API Manifesto
Xyna Bulletin #23
Dear friends, partners, and customers of Xyna, When you're as focused on exciting new features and projects as we are, you rarely get to write a newsletter. That's why this issue is only reaching you now, at the end of May – when major events are already casting their promising shadows. In less than four weeks, this year's dtw ignite!, the TM Forum's flagship global conference, kicks off in Copenhagen. This year, we'll be there with our Xyna booth (booth #227) and part of the Catalyst "Broadband as a Service" team (kiosk i 1.6). In advance, we signed the TM Forum's Open API Manifesto this week. We commit to following the guidelines for interoperability between ODA components based on Open APIs with Xyna, wherever appropriate. More on this below. Enjoy! Best regards from Mainz, Philipp :: Xyna and the Open API Manifesto The TM Forum Open API Manifesto is a public commitment to an open, standardized, and collaborative approach to IT architecture design. https://www.tmforum.org/open-api-manifesto/ To date, over 200 providers and suppliers have committed to supporting the basic principles of Open APIs and implementing them in their products and projects. And from now on, we too find ourselves among this illustrious group: This is remarkable in that just a few years ago, such a development was not necessarily foreseeable – at least from our perspective. The TM Forum had already had interesting approaches with NGOSS, eTOM, TAM, SID, and others, but these were only of limited relevance to the truly "hard" projects in the telco industry. Since the evolution toward ODA with the core concept of Open APIs gained momentum in 2022/2023, we've seen the concepts of Canvas, Components, and Open APIs take on real form in more and more customer projects. This is also impressively reflected in the TM Forum's figures: We've been a member of the TM Forum again since the end of 2023. In 2024, we had a fantastic presentation on the topic of NETWORK AS CODE at dtw ignite together with Deutsche Telekom. This year, as the Technical Lead of the Catalyst project BROADBAND AS A SERVICE, we are already deeply rooted in the community's structures. Anyone who has known us for a while knows that we don't follow short-term trends unless absolutely necessary. And certainly not some random institution. But here and now, we see the TM Forum and the Open Digital Framework as a sustainable, important, and industry-defining concept that works not just theoretically in PowerPoint, but concretely in demanding projects. The benefits of Open APIs as an open standard for interoperability, flexibility, and scalability have already been proven. Therefore, we are also investing in training and continuing education regarding the standards – the first certifications have been achieved. In the coming months, we will expand this in a structured and broad-based manner among our architects and consultants. At the same time, we are continuing to develop the TMF tools in Xyna: recently, Xyna learned how to handle newer Genv5 and DSC API definitions. This has been important both in customer projects and in the Catalyst demo project we will present in Copenhagen. :: dtw ignite: Catalyst "Broadband as a Service" & Xyna We have already reported on our Catalyst project in recent Bulletin issues. It concerns the standardization of wholesale processes and interfaces between ServCo (service provider for the customer) and NetCo (network operator, especially infrastructure provider in the fiber optic sector). Such interfaces already exist today; however, they vary from country to country, often with proprietary characteristics, different technical implementations, and no uniform service model – making them complex to implement for CSPs and software providers active in more than one country. Based on open APIs and standardized ODA components, we demonstrate in Catalyst what a blueprint for wholesale could look like, in which the parties or their applications such as SQM, POM, SOM, or ROM communicate with each other based on TMF938. TMF938 – if that doesn't mean anything to you, the keyword Domain Context Specialization (DCS) is a good starting point. In this standard, structures from common open APIs are essentially collected and directly pre-populated with context-specific values for the wholesale domain. A very new and innovative concept, even for the TM Forum. If you want to know more (and are a member of the TM Forum), the in-house magazine "inform" has published a detailed article on the Catalyst: https://inform.tmforum.org/features-and-opinion/standards-are-key-to-simplifying-wholesale-broadband-worldwide Karsten Thon, Wholesale Business Architect, Program Management Wholesale Interfaces at Deutsche Telekom, and Egil Risvoll Sørensen, Vice President IT Wholesale at Lyse Tele in Norway, among others, report on the goals and findings of the Catalyst under the headline "It's crucial to have standardization." (And if you don't have a TM Forum account but really want to read it, feel free to get in touch; I think we'll find a way...) Enjoy reading! Or even better: we look forward to seeing you in Copenhagen. If you're there and want to see the results firsthand, live, and in color—come on over! We'll be there. 😊