AT&T, Orange and Colt work on ecosystem of connected Service Provider Networks

AT&T, Orange, and Colt Technology Services are working with MEF and TM Forum to release the first set of standard application programming interfaces (APIs) for orchestrated Carrier Ethernet services later this year.

This initiative uses MEF’s LSO (Lifecycle Service Orchestration) framework and TM Forum’s Open API framework.

AT&T, Orange, and Colt have been working to accelerate adoption of SDN across the industry. AT&T has been collaborating with the enterprise arm of Orange, Orange Business Services, on standardized APIs that will enable SDN architectures from different network service providers to interoperate with each other.

AT&T and Colt held the first successful SDN interoperability trial proving that SDN architectures from different network service providers can interoperate with each other across continents.

After a successful proof of concept, the companies are leading the charge, along with MEF and TM Forum, to accelerate efforts to develop a set of standardized APIs for industry-wide use.

Service providers will be able to use standardized APIs to work with each other’s SDN architectures in near-real time. The projected release of the first round of APIs is at the end of 2017. This is a key step toward enabling orchestrated on-demand services over more automated and interconnected networks.

Traditionally, each service provider uses different systems and interfaces to manage different aspects of its networks. This creates friction and inefficiency when providing an end-to-end service. Our world is becoming increasingly connected.

A “smart” network is critical to deliver services to customers across many networks.

“The more companies that are using a standard, the more powerful and beneficial it becomes for everybody,” says Roger Entner, founder of Recon Analytics Inc.

“As momentum builds, more and more operators, vendors and other partners will find it advantageous to join in or they will be faced with the danger of falling behind their competitors.”

The API standardization project will build upon TM Forum Open API standards work involving nine of the world’s largest service providers.

There are plans to standardize 8 API definitions. This builds on the industry-agreed Open APIs developed by TM Forum members. The first 3 APIs below will be defined in the first round of the project this year.

1. Address validation
2. Service availability
3. Ordering
4. Quoting
5. Billing
6. Assurance
7. Testing
8. Change management