Digital Transformation World Series, London, UK — TM Forum, the industry association driving digital business transformation through collaboration, today announced that Ericsson, Huawei and Salesforce, three of the world’s largest industry suppliers, have added their names to the already impressive list of communications service providers (CSPs), systems integrators and software vendors committing to collaboratively develop the Open Digital Architecture.

In addition, Beesion, Cognity, Incognito, Neustar, Nexign, NTT Group, ServiceNow, Global Wavenet and Whale Cloud now count themselves among the 42 total companies publicly committed to creating a market for standardized and interoperable software components.

By adding their names to TM Forum’s Open API and Open Digital Architecture Manifesto, these companies are publicly demonstrating their dedication to creating a market for innovative, standardized and interoperable software components to run service provider businesses, enabling the industry to invest in IT for new and differentiated services instead of maintaining heavily customized legacy code.

The progress in developing the Open Digital Architecture and Open APIs is just one example of how TM Forum members have embraced remote methods to continue their collaborative work despite the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. As TM Forum’s flagship Digital Transformation World Series begins online today with 9,000+ attendees, evidence of the support and need for collaboration is clear.

Another indication of the industry’s commitment to the Forum’s standards is the increasing demand for TM Forum’s virtual Education and Development programs with over 4,000 member professionals from more than 260 companies completing 12,000 training courses in the last six months. Five companies have each completed more than 1,000 courses (AsiaInfo, China Telecom, ETIYA, Nokia and Tecnotree); and 2,350 professionals have achieved over 6,000 knowledge certifications.

Collaborating for transformation

“We see the TM Forum’s Open Digital Architecture and Open APIs as important enablers for the industry wide transformation to software-based, automated, intelligent networks,” said Jan Karlsson, Senior Vice President and Head of Business Area Digital Services, Ericsson. “We are pleased to be adding our name to the list of supporters of the Forum’s manifesto and look forward to collaborating and defining future standards.”

Haiping Che, Chief Digital Transformation Officer, Huawei, said, “A rapid and radical shift to an open, modern, service-based architecture that enables new business models and operational models and uses the Open Digital Architecture and Open APIs as guidelines is critical for digital transformation of the telco industry. The huge challenges and opportunities of 5G 2B scenarios require CSPs to have business capabilities such as flexible production and agile commercialization for new offerings like Connectivity-as-a-Service. We are committed to collaborating to build a new generation telecom software market that can support the CSPs of the future.”

“Only through collaboration, can the industry can attain the knowledge and agree on common standards and assets such as Open APIs required to kindle a software marketplace,” said John Carney, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Communications and Media at Industry, Salesforce. “We believe the shift to standardized, components-based, cloud native models will reduce barriers and make it easier to generate value around 5G.”*

“We are delighted by the level of commitment the telecom industry is showing when it comes to building and supporting an Open Digital Architecture,” said Nik Willetts, CEO, TM Forum. “Adding these new companies alongside our existing committed members demonstrates that the whole industry is now on board with the development of standardized plug-and-play components, data models and Open APIs. Now we must stay focused to turn the commitments into reality.”

*Salesforce among others are trademarks of salesforce.com, inc.

Open API adoption increases

As part of the Open Digital Architecture, TM Forum members have collaborated to develop a suite of 50+ REST-based Open APIs that can be used in a range of business scenarios. CSPs are increasingly requiring that their suppliers support these Open APIs. As a result, each month 1,800 unique users from 350 different companies are downloading over 10,000 API assets from TM Forum, totaling 300,000+ downloads.

TM Forum has been conducting regular Open API Adoption Assessment surveys for CSPs and vendors to help them understand their progress in implementing Open APIs relative to their peers, and help the industry measure the overall adoption of Open APIs.

To date, 35 vendors and 14 CSPs have participated in the surveys. The industry’s overall maturity score (now standing at 45%) has been increasing on average by one percentage point per month, demonstrating significant momentum in Open API adoption. The Forum will publish updated survey results at the end of Digital Transformation World Series on November 12.

In line with CSP requirements for Open APIs, vendor demand for the Forum’s Open API Conformance Certification has more than doubled during 2020. Open API Conformance Certification helps build an open and dynamic market, enabling vendors to differentiate their products and solutions while proving alignment with industry best practices and standards.

About the Open API and Open Digital Architecture Manifesto

To date the Open API and Open Digital Architecture Manifesto is supported by 42 companies, including 15 global service providers. A total of 69 companies have signed the Open API Manifesto to support TM Forum’s Open APIs, a necessary first step on the path to Open Digital Architecture’s standardized software component model.