www.tmforum.

org

OPEN APIs:
TURNING BUSINESS
STRATEGY INTO REALITY

OCTOBER 2016
www.tmforum.org/open-apis

CONTENTS

Executive summary ........................................................................3

Chapter 1: The market and opportunity....................................4

Chapter 2: API strategy is integral to business planning ......6

Chapter 3: How do you implement the API strategy,

then keep it on track? ..................................................................10

Chapter 4: The innovation culture............................................16

Appendix 1: TM Forum Open API Roadmap ............................18

Author
Joann OBrien,
Vice President,
Open APIs & Ecosystems
jobrien@tmforum.org

Editor
Annie Turner,
Senior Director,
Editorial
aturner@tmforum.org

Advisors
Pierre Gauthier, Chief API Architect, TM Forum
John Wilmes, Director, Open Digital Ecosystem Project, TM Forum

2016. The entire contents of this publication are protected by copyright. All rights reserved. The views and opinions expressed by individual authors and contributors in this publication are provided in the writers
personal capacities and are their sole responsibility. Their publication does not imply that they represent the views or opinions of TM Forum and must neither be regarded as constituting advice on any matter whatsoever,
nor be interpreted as such. The reproduction of advertisements and sponsored features in this publication does not in any way imply endorsement by TM Forum of products or services referred to therein.

2 Open APIs: Turning business strategy into reality

 EBOOK

EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY
Platform-enabled businesses and business models have dedicated to exploring the scale and
scope of the opportunity open to
reshaped many global sectors in the last decade and will them. Note that although the open
profoundly change many more. The purpose of this ebook APIs have been developed by
incumbent and other
is first to show how APIs are a fundamental, strategic asset communications and technology
for every business whether a startup or incumbent, a providers, their application is by no
means limited to the communications
multinational or a government department, a digital health, industry, as we show in Chapter 4.
Internet of Things/Everything (IoT/E) or smart grid provider,
among others. Read this ebook to understand:
The second aim is to show how to Amazon, among others, plus n What platform businesses are and
ensure that APIs are used consistently communications service providers why theyre successful
and strategically in support of around the world to give external
business goals. Just how fundamental organizations access to selected core n What APIs are
this is to a platform business was resources.
demonstrated by Google buying n How to use APIs to enable new
Apigee for a reported $625 million in APIs are not new they enable business models
September 2016. conversations between software
systems for a multitude of purposes. n How to implement an API strategy
Two of the most important attributes But the technology they are built on, and keep it on track
of a platform-based business are that their functions and roles have evolved.
they are modular and facilitate In particular, in the digital era, open n How TM Forums other assets can
interconnectivity with third parties. that is, publicly available, standardized work together with APIs
Modularity allows systems to be APIs have proliferated massively and
assembled, disassembled and are used by many companies, including n Why establishing a culture of
reassembled quickly, cheaply and those mentioned above, to encourage innovation is necessary for success
easily, while external interconnectivity external talent to exploit those core
allows for easy, rapid connectivity assets to everyones advantage. We hope you enjoy this primer on APIs
outside the organization. and find it useful. Many thanks to our
For this reason, TM Forums member Collaboration Community for their
APIs make this possible they are the organizations have developed a suite help in creating this publication, in
interfaces used by Google Maps, the of 18 open APIs, with more in the particular Andreas Polz from Infonova
New York Stock Exchange, Salesforce, pipeline, to open up their terrific and Jean-Luc Tymen from Orange, our
Thomson Reuters Eikon, Twitter and assets and indeed Chapter 1 is team leaders in the Open API project.

www.tmforum.org 3
www.tmforum.org/open-apis

CHAPTER 1 THE MARKET

AND OPPORTUNITY

A platform business is defined in the groundbreaking book,

Amazons
founder Jeff Platform Revolution, as, a business based on enabling
Bezos, was quick value-creating interactions between external producers and
to understand the consumers. The platform provides an open, participative
power of APIs to infrastructure for these interactions and sets governance
expand and conditions for them. The platforms overarching purpose: To
reshape a
business. consummate matches between users and facilitate the
exchange of goods, services, or social currency, thereby
enabling value creation for all participants.

Unlocking value this mandate was sent out by Bezos:

APIs play a critical role in unlocking the
usefulness of data and information
assets by enabling them to be
combined with internal or external
assets. They allow unparalleled speed
and scale for mashed-up services,
bringing all kinds of information,
individuals, companies and other
organizations together for purposes
limited only by imagination. These
interfaces enable the platform
business model as well as other
collaborative models.
Amazons founder Jeff Bezos, was
quick to understand the power of APIs
to expand and reshape a business.
According to former Amazon
employee, Steve Yegge, circa 2002
n All teams will henceforth expose
their data and functionality through
service interfaces.
n Teams must communicate with
each other through these
interfaces.
n There will be no other form of inter-
process communication allowed: no
direct linking, no direct reads of
another teams data store, no
shared-memory model, no back-
doors whatsoever. The only
communication allowed is via service
interface calls over the network.
n It doesnt matter what technology
they use.

4 Open APIs: Turning business strategy into reality


n All service interfaces, without
exception, must be designed from
the ground up to be externalizable.
That is to say, the team must plan
and design to be able to expose the
interface to developers in the
outside world. No exceptions.
The mandate closed with:
Anyone who doesnt do this
will be fired. Thank you; have
a nice day!
This enabled many new areas to thrive
while growing the core business. For
instance, Amazon Web Services (AWS)
was born estimates put AWS value
at $160 billion if it were a company in
its own right. For a long time, AWS was
the only part of the company that
made money. Crucially, this enabled
Amazon to invest in other parts of the
business (retail, devices, its
Marketplace for third-party sellers,
producing TV content) that are a
longer-term play. AWS still contributes
most of the profit, which bodes well for
anyone looking to grow fast by opening
up their infrastructure.
Further, the platform business model
functions at many levels within Amazon.
For example, Inter-departmental
interactions work on the same basis as
those with external parties at Amazon,
but also a third-party bookseller can sell
through Amazon Marketplace or set up
its own, competing online store through
AWS, or do both.
The network effect
Platform businesses benefit from the
network effect, whereby a large, well-
managed platform community
produces value for each member of
that community. So Uber makes hailing
a cab more convenient. Word spreads,
more drivers sign up and more
passengers find a ride more quickly
and use the service more, so drivers
waste less time between jobs.
www.tmforum.org
Less downtime means lower fares are
viable, which stimulates more
demand. This virtuous cycle means
coverage becomes denser, and
encourages others to start up
elsewhere. Hence being able to scale
rapidly is a key attribute.
Morphing business models
Another key characteristic is that
platform businesses can morph or
grow by leveraging their assets in new
ways. For example, Uber is planning to
spend half a billion dollars developing
its own maps (using cameras in its cars)
because Google Maps arent detailed
enough for its future business model of
using driverless vehicles for all kinds of
deliveries, not just passengers.
The size of the opportunity is
HUGE
IBM describes what it calls the API
economy as a commercial exchange of
business functions, capabilities, or
competencies as services packaged in
APIs... [it] is the driving force behind much
of the digital transformation across
industries today, enabling business
leaders to transform their organizations,
build new ecosystems, and monetize
core assets, services and products.
IBMs estimate is that the API Economy
will be a $2.2 trillion market by 2018.
According to research house Ovum,
during the next two to three years, the
number of enterprises having an API
program is expected to increase by
150 percent.
Arguably incumbents in many sectors
have the advantage because as Sam
Ramji, Vice President of Strategy,
Apigee, explained in a recent interview
with PwC, The winners in the API game
overall are going to be the smartest
legacy businesses, because they have
an unfair advantage of decades of
transaction data as well as other
information and data assets."
EBOOK
Big winners is no exaggeration: The
profits of the top 50 publicly-traded
platform companies over the last five
years, amount to over $1.3 trillion. The
largest market, North America, is worth
more than $1 trillion measured by
market capitalization, and arguably were
only in the first wave, with the Internet of
Everything (IoE) still in its infancy.
The IoE will dwarf todays person-to-
person communications market,
whichever prediction you believe.
According to Deloittes Tech Trends
2015: The fusion of business and IT, APIs
are the backbone of the opportunity.
Whoever manages and monetizes
the underlying services of the IoT could
be poised to reshape industries.
In this market,
if companies can
overcome their
organizational
inertia,
incumbents
actually have
every opportunity
to be the big
winners in each
industry with
APIs.
Sam Ramji, VP, Strategy, Apigee
5
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CHAPTER 2: API
STRATEGY IS INTEGRAL
TO BUSINESS PLANNING

Weve established that APIs are strategic assets, not tactical

fixes, and they must be aligned with the business strategy to
make it happen. Googles acquisition of Apigee, the enterprise
API management company, on September 8, underlines this.

The acquisition cost a reported $625
million and is one of Googles largest in
recent times. Apigee will play a vital
role in advancing Googles cloud-
based services for enterprises. An
article in Forbes, claimed, It will
become the crucial bridge between
the massive Google developer
community and its cloud platform,
and concluded, This move from
Diane Greene [Vice President, Cloud
Platform, Google] will be remembered
by the industry as the masterstroke.
Jay Barneys VRIO model (see Figure Figure 2-1: VRIO model
2-1), although created in the 1990s,
has particular relevance when
considering which assets provide the
greatest opportunity for sustained
strategic advantage in a data- and Value Rareness
platform-driven business world. Put
another way, to identify the assets that
differentiate you in the market. Barney
suggested the key criteria were:
n Value (Is it valuable?)
Imitability Organization
n Rarity (Is it rare?)

Where to begin? n Imitability (Is it difficult to Imitate?)

A first step to align business and API n Organization (Is the company Source: Jay Barney, 1992
strategies should be an internal organized to exploit it easily?)
evaluation of which assets and
capabilities your organization could
make available to third parties for
sharing, reuse and/or resale, using
different partnering and business
models to create new revenue streams.

6 Open APIs: Turning business strategy into reality

 EBOOK

Figure 2-2: Alternative B2B2X scenarios, using smart TV as an example

XYZ Telco's role as the B2B2X XYZ Telco's role as the B2B2X
service provider
XYZ Telcos role is to enable the partners to XYZ Telcos role is to enable, aggregate and
commercialize their offerings commercialize offerings

Scenario A Scenario B
XYZ Telco Role Partner Partner XYZ Telco
XYZ Telco as XYZ Telco as
operator /
service provider
Content
service End- Content
service
operator /
service provider End-
+ other SPs
integrated
provider
or distributor user provider
or distributor
+ other SPs
integrated user
services services

Scenario A Scenario B
customer relations are managed end-to-end by DSPs customer relations are managed end-to-end by CSP

Source: TM Forums B2B2X Partnering Step-by-Step Guide

Possible opportunities for assets In scenario A above the telco is

A key next step is to understand the
business opportunities that are open
to you by externalizing these assets,
noting the potential for a multitude of
different partnering, business and
contractual models.
To help demonstrate this, TM Forums
B2B2X Partnering Step-by-Step Guide
provides examples for how a service
provider could play a different role in
the value chain offering the same
service or core capability, but
monetizing that service in a different
way, through a different partnership
model, see Figure 2-2.
choosing to expose its services to A key next step
another partner potentially even a is to understand
competitor and enter into a revenue- the business
sharing model allowing the other opportunities
provider to maintain the contract and
relationship with the customer. that are open to
you by
In scenario B the telco maintains the externalizing
contractual relationship with the end these assets.
customer and manages the end-to-
end process, including the partnering
arrangement with a content service
provider.

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18824 OPEN API eBook V2.qxp_Layout 1 28/10/2016 14:46 Page 8
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New markets and/or new
products
While some organizations feel
threatened by potential
disintermediation, others recognize the
opportunity to sell more services to
new markets through new partnership
and revenue-sharing models.
One way to evaluate how partnering
opportunities can help realize business
strategy is through an applied version of
Ansoffs Product and Market Expansion
Matrix, which allows organizations to
evaluate how these partnering
opportunities can be used to realize
business strategy (see graphic below).
Diversification is generally considered
the most difficult business expansion
strategy. Most organizations de-risk
Current products
Current market
Sell current product to
existing customers
Market penetration
New market
Sell existing products
to new customers
Market development
8 Open APIs: Turning business strategy into reality
long-term diversification strategy by
applying a market development or
product development strategy in the
shorter term.
The models in the scenarios outlined
above provide a clear mechanism for
partnering to reach different markets
through the bundling of services with
offerings from different companies and
industries by externalizing existing assets
through APIs. For more about access to
ready-made tools (such as proven
business processes) to make business
scenarios a reality, see page 14.
This opens new growth opportunities
for businesses, taking the so-called
sharing economy from something that
individuals do to something that
enterprises embrace as a genuine
growth and innovation opportunity.
New products
Sell new products to
existing customers
Product development
Sell new products to
new customers
Diversification
 EBOOK

Adapt and get to market fast To appreciate the degree of flexibility

required, Figure 2-3 shows potential These Ansoff
These Ansoff strategies (except for future models that need to be strategies (except
market penetration) demand considered. You can see that the for market
companies adapt quickly to seize the number of possible business or
opportunity and get to market fast contractual models can rise
penetration)
those that are sufficiently agile will be exponentially, depending on how demand companies
able to address opportunities faster many parties are involved. adapt quickly to
and are highly likely to be the winners seize the
in the longer term. opportunity and
get to market fast.
Figure 2-3: Potential multi-faceted business models

Contract Contract Scenario

Type TR211 Responsibility
aka TR211 Role

Integrate Sell To I resell a product / service through a customer/partner who

repackages it in a global offer proposed to its cutomers. I
have no contractual relationship with their end custmoers.

Reseller Of I resell the products / services of a partner to deliver their

product / service. I have the contractual relationship with
the end customer.

Distribute Sell Through My product / service is distributed by a third party

unchanged, I may or may not maintain a contractual
relationship with the end customer.

Sold Through I sell the products / services of a partner to deliver their

product / service. I may or may not have a contractual
relationship with the end customer.

Co-sell Sell With I partner with a third party to deliver an offer, each party
bringing a component of the global offer.
The coupling may be weak (co-contracting / consortium) or
strong ( joint venture: a third party legal structure creation).
I maintain the relationship with the end customer and the
control of its product / service (either directly or through the
legal structure created) for the part of the offer it provides.

Based TR211 TR217 Concepts Mapping v1 12th March 2014

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www.tmforum.org/open-apis

CHAPTER 3: HOW DO YOU

IMPLEMENT THE API STRATEGY,
THEN KEEP IT ON TRACK?

There are four critical elements involved in implementing an

The Forum's
approach is to open API strategy and keeping it on track:
seek pragmatic
solutions based on 1. Platform architecture
our members 2. Open APIs
real-world 3. Streamline with Business Process and Information Frameworks
implementation
experiences. 4. API Management System

1. Platform architecture tools and best practices, which

Platform architecture underpins the
platform economy. As with any
significant change-management
project, one of the first activities is to
create a vision of the future. A well-
defined platform architecture is a
representation of how the business will
achieve the agility it needs to realize
that collective vision.
TM Forum is developing a Digital
Platform Reference Architecture
(DPRA), under strategic direction from
the Board of Directors Collaboration
Subcommittee, which includes
executives from several of the worlds
largest communications service
providers. It builds on the Forums
Frameworx suite of standards-based
includes the B2B2X Partnering Guide,
the Digital Services Reference
Architecture (DSRA), the Digital
Ecosystem Reference Architecture
(DERA) and our Open APIs. The Forum
will be publishing a companion ebook
to this one on the DPRA shortly.
The Forum's approach is to seek
pragmatic solutions based on our
members real-world implementation
experiences. This includes
collaborating to develop common
information and data models, user
guides and APIs to help operators
expose their rich and vast networking
capabilities as platform providers. The
point is to work together on the
underlying processes that everyone
uses and then innovate on top.

10 Open APIs: Turning business strategy into reality

 EBOOK

Pragmatic, real-life A critical advantage of platforms and

contributions APIs is that they provide an A critical
evolutionary path from the current
For example, Vodafone is a key telco operating model to the future
advantage of
contributor and leader in TM Forums network-as-a-service model. The platforms and
Open API project, and has contributed collaborative work that TM Forum and APIs is that they
its exemplar platform architecture to my fellow members have been provide an
that work. The architecture has a undertaking is shining a bright light on evolutionary path
modular structure and clearly shows this important path. Dr. Lester
the critical role of APIs in enabling Thomas, Chief Systems Architect, from the current
business agility (see Figure 3-1). Vodafone Group. telco operating
model to the
future network-
Figure 3-1: Vodafones platform architecture
as-a-service
model.
Dr. Lester Thomas, Vodafone
Business

Customer
Product Catalogue Customer Customer Loyalty

Management
Management APIs Management APIs APIs

Partnering Customer Order Billing & Payment Customer Service

APIs APIs APIs APIs

Marketing
Service Charging APIs Service Inventory

Management
APIs

Service
Managemnet APIs APIs

Analytics
Service Order Service Catalogue
APIs
APIs APIs

Enterprise
APIs
Resource

Resource Resource
Management

Managemnet APIs Inventory APIs

Common
APIs Resource Order Resource
APIs Catalogue APIs

Source: Vodafone

BT adopts platforms could be useful to our customers too,

Similarly, BT has been working to
consolidate operational and business
support systems (OSS/BSS) during the
past six or seven years, reducing the
number from 4,500 to 1,798.
We started this work to transform
ourselves internally, but then a few
light bulbs went on and we realized it
who were trying to manage their [BT]
services through self-service portals,
says George Glass, Chief Systems
Architect, BT.
The plan is to minimize whole lifecycle
costs, reduce cycle time for launching
new capabilities and facilitate business
agility through platforms and APIs.

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www.tmforum.org/open-apis

2. Open APIs
The successful platform organizations
we have looked at in this ebook all have
an API strategy at their core. TM
Forums Open APIs can provide the
foundation for APIs in all kinds of
business ecosystems, whether the
Free to need is to expose core capabilities,
drive agility and operational
Use improvement, or simplify and speed
partnering. The Forums Open APIs
can save vast amounts of time and
enable interoperability across and
between ecosystems.
Strong
Community The Open APIs suite is REST-based
and available to developers
everywhere to use, underpinned by a
strong community of TM Forum
Available experts from across the globe. They
Copyleft Source enable rapid, repeatable and flexible
integration of diverse systems to make
Code it easier, faster and cheaper to create,
build and operate complex, innovative
services. These REST APIs can be used
by practically any programming
language and are also easy to test.

Importantly, the Forum takes the

C
copyleft approach (as opposed to
copyright), meaning our members are
encouraged to contribute extensions
and enhancements to the Open APIs
for the benefit of everyone who uses
them. By fostering this crowdsourcing
approach to development,
contributing extensions and
enhancements to the Forums APIs is
extremely popular.

12 Open APIs: Turning business strategy into reality

 EBOOK

TM Forums suite of Open APIs can unlock a range of growth opportunities, including:

operators can radically improve

n Monetizing significant assets as
noted in Chapter 1 by Apigees Sam
Ramji, incumbents have terrific
assets which put them in a very
strong position, although they need
to overcome geographic
restrictions to be more attractive
to partners and developers open
APIs enable them to combine their
assets for services such as M2M,
IoT, enterprise mobile services and
many more.
n Reducing the cost and complexity
of operations particularly
important for organizations with
subsidiaries in more than 20
countries and territories as they need
to reduce costs, simplify operations
and create harmony across
geographic regions, and deploy new
services and products globally.
n Reducing integration cost, risk
and simplify the provisioning,
flexibility and scalability of
wholesale services. Working
together, using the same open
APIs, operators can collectively
scale to provide a global
connectivity ecosystem.
and time for the entire supply
chain particularly when used in
conjunction with TM Forums
established Frameworx standards.

n Enabling a global ecosystem for

n Dramatically improving business
and IT agility this was voted top
priority by network providers in the
Forums recent primary research,
and open APIs help by supporting
an open modular platform
architecture that hides the
underlying complexity to offer
capabilities to partners.
wholesale connectivity today
wholesale capacity is provided
inefficiently, involving many manual
processes, which are slow and
expensive. As communications
networks become increasingly
controlled by software through
technologies such as network
functions virtualization (NFV) and
software-defined networking
(SDN) by using the Open APIs,

+ {open}:apis+ +{open}:apis
{open}:platform
+ {open}:platform
Eight leading technology ecosystem participants DGIT, EnterpriseWeb, Ericsson, Huawei, IBM, BearingPoint/Infonova, Oracle
and UXP Systems have officially endorsed TM Forums suite of Open APIs for digital service management. These visionary
companies follow in the footsteps of nine of the worlds largest communications service providers Axiata, Bharti Airtel, BT,
China Mobile, China Unicom, NTT-Group, Orange, Telefnica and Vodafone who made a similar commitment in May 2016.

+ {open}:apis + {open}

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www.tmforum.org/open-apis

3. Streamlining business the Forums Collaboration

processes, using a common
language
The worlds best architecture and APIs
only perform to their full potential if
business processes are streamlined,
joined-up, efficient and easy to assemble
and reassemble as required. Just as
using open APIs makes deployment
quick and easy, using readily available
tools for business processes and
common definitions is a fast route to
realizing business strategy too.
The Business Process Framework is a
key part of TM Forums Frameworx
suite of best practices and standards,
which provides the blueprint for
effective, efficient business operations.
It enables you to assess and optimize
performance and integration. The
practical tools available in Frameworx
help improve end-to-end management
of services across complex, multi-
partner environments.
Frameworx has been widely adopted
and proven to significantly improve
agility in IT and operations (it is
commonplace for companies to save
millions in annual operational costs,
for example, as we have demonstrated
in many case studies published on
inform.tmforum.org), resulting in
increased margins, lower costs and
optimal customer experience.
Frameworx is created and evolved by
TM Forum members who participate in
Community, along with the APIs.
A key element of consistent, replicable
and reusable business processes is
using a common language, and TM
Forums Information Framework
provides standard definitions for all
the information that flows through the
enterprise and between companies
and their business partners. This
means everyone talks about the same
things using the same terminology and
syntax, aiding consistency, avoiding
mismatches and speeding things up.
The best way to get the most out of
the Forums Open APIs is to use them
in conjunction with the Business
Process and Information Frameworks.
This is because the respective data
structure is provided with every new
Open API and aligned to the
Information Framework.
In this way, the Open APIs align directly
to expose an organizations asset or
the data structure. As the Framework
is widely adopted throughout the
communications industry, it also helps
ensure interoperability one of the key
objectives of the Open API program.
TM Forums Open API poster (which
can be downloaded free by everyone
who registers on our website) is helpful
when considering which APIs to
implement first and which to share
with the wider community.

Making it even easier and faster

To make Frameworx more easily accessible and simpler to use, the Forum has developed a Digital
Services Toolkit. As youd expect, the toolkit interacts with Frameworx via an API. The toolkit has
visualization, planning and operational tools, so users can easily and dynamically group Frameworx
elements into logical building blocks to create all kinds of digital services.

The wiki-style format enables users to notate individual pages with feedback and tips, to constantly improve the
toolkit and therefore Frameworxs usefulness and applicability.

The toolkit also has a Business Scenarios Template to enable users to choose the right items for their specific needs.
Most importantly, the process for creating a scenario is built-in so the user can progress through each key phase. For
more information about the Digital Services Toolkit, contact John Wilmes via jwilmes@tmforum.org

14 Open APIs: Turning business strategy into reality


4. API Management System
Amazon's and Jeff Bezos' success was
fundamentally underpinned by a
strong governance of externalizing
internal assets as digital assets and
recognizing the potential for
partnership with external customers as
well as internal ones. Organizations
need to build an API roadmap and
system to ensure excellent governance
is in place to reach right across even
the largest of organizations.
Centralized governance will ensure
that the right APIs are developed and
that they are used in a consistent
manner to further business goals.
To address these issues, technology
teams are investing in API
management to ensure a systematic
approach to the creation, governance
and deployment of APIs.
This will include ensuring that all APIs
follow industry standard principles
such as:
n Abstraction, to ensure that the
business capability is exposed
appropriately and complexity is
hidden
n Reusability, to ensure that APIs are
created with re-use in mind
Managing your APIs as a product
A good API management system should also enable you to manage your API as a product including catering to potential
future monetization models such as:
Customers pay a fixed fee for
using the platform
Y
All three could be involved in a single transaction with different parties, as well as perhaps a subscription fee, such as
Amazons Prime for the end customer: Amazons sellers are the companys customers as well as the end buyer.
www.tmforum.org
EBOOK
n Discoverability, to ensure that
contractual requirements of the API Centralized
can be automatically interpreted governance will
ensure that the right
n Developer-friendly, to ensure that
the APIs can be consumed with
APIs are developed
minimal effort or cost, that their and that they are
scope and purpose is clear, and used in a consistent
that source code is provided. manner to further
business goals.
Beyond good governance and oversight
the next stage would be a full API
management capability, as offered by a
number of providers. These should be
evaluated to ensure the following
minimum requirements are catered to:
n access control, without being a
barrier to use;
n analytics, to help guide future
development considerations
regarding popularity; and
n secure access and token
provisioning.
Note that in non-commercial platform
deployments, such as by government
agencies, the aim is often to increase
savings, streamline processes and
improve services to their users. In most
organizations commercial and
otherwise additional necessary
functions are likely to include marketing,
billing, advertising, usage monitoring
and more, beyond monetization.
a transaction-based fee a revenue-share model in which
is charged by the platform customers pay a share of their
provider for every transaction revenues to the platform
carried out on it provider in exchange for using the
platform services
15
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CHAPTER 4: THE
INNOVATION CULTURE

The key to a pragmatic, successful strategy is not to re-

It is ultimately
people and culture invent the wheel, but to leverage APIs and other proven
that will make the tools including TM Forums suite of business ecosystem
difference between Open APIs. The ProgrammableWeb is also an excellent
success and failure. source of over 15,000 APIs.

While the platform architecture, API strategy and API management systems are vital
to realizing a business strategy requiring a high degree of agility, it is ultimately people
and culture that will make the difference between success and failure. As business
guru Peter Drucker pointed out long ago, culture eats strategy for breakfast.

If an organization continues with business as usual, or reverts to the way things

used to be, it will kill innovation, including the potential for leveraging
infrastructure. The choices are, according to McKinsey, Grow fast or die slow.

STRATEGY

CULTURE

Source: Derived from Peter Drucker

16 Open APIs: Turning business strategy into reality


A culture of open innovation looks from
the outside in, not the other way round.
A much broader lens on innovation and
R&D can have a massive impact on
realizing strategic objectives.
C where you can help
Innovation at work
TM Forum has taken its own advice by
in recent years launching an
{open}:hack an integrated platform
{open}:innovation = {open}:data + {open}:apis + {open}:platform
This open innovation has been hugely
successful at sharing ideas, skills,
talent and technology across
collaborative teams to create new
solutions to real problems. The most
recent winning team, Firebot based in
Vancouver, Canada, created an
application to detect forest fires
quickly and provide accurate location
through crowdsourcing to reduce
response times. It could be applied to
other types of emergency response.
Click on the screen shots below to see
articles about our series of hackathons
held around the world to see the
diverse uses developers have come up
with for TM Forums open APIs almost
all of whom were new to the Forum.
www.tmforum.org
to link ecosystems, to which we have
given teams of startup and enterprise
developers access. This has proven to
be a win-win formula, where both
hosting companies and hack
participants can work collaboratively
to create new applications and
platforms built upon services exposed
by the host companies.
What to do right now
Remember Jeff Bezos edict that
everything is to be linked via API that
could be externalized for third-parties
use in future. Naturally, consumers of
certain services will be internal
customers, but all new services need to
be constructed in this agile way to
support the platform business strategy,
which is all about being able to seize new
opportunities, create new business
models and repurpose assets whether
infrastructure or data as needed.
Increasingly, organizations boundaries
will not be easy to recognize, as market
places exist at every level; consider a
bookseller who may compete against
Amazon by being a Marketplace seller
(and so an Amazon customer too), as
well as hosting its own online store on
Amazon Web.
EBOOK
Get started
straightaway by
joining TM Forums
Open API Project team
build and crowdsource
the common APIs your
organization needs to
transform to a
platform-based
business.
This across-the-board discipline has to
start now and extend to legacy systems
and services too, which can still be
exposed in an intelligent and useful way
through APIs. Get started straightaway
by joining TM Forums Open API Project
team where you can help build and
crowdsource the common APIs your
organization needs to transform to a
platform-based business.
See the Ecosystem to Ecosystem
Catalyst which will be presented at TM
Forum Live in Asia, in December 2016.
For open innovation opportunities,
where you can bring your developer
and product teams to mash up new
innovative services for your company,
see TM Forums Open Hack series.
17
www.tmforum.org/open-apis

APPENDIX 1: TM FORUM
OPEN API ROADMAP
Similar to the copyleft approach, all we ask is that you engage with our community
share your experiences, amendments for improvements and extensions.

Early Adopter Update Coming

Open API Roadmap Available
Beta APIs Planned Soon
Trouble Ticket API 3
Customer Management API 3
Product Catalog Management API 3
Product Inventory Management API 3
Product Inventory Management API 3
Billing Management API 3 3
Party Management API 3
SLA Management API 3
Usage Management API 3
Activation and Configuration API 3
Performance Management API 3 3
Privacy API 3
Onboarding API 3
Agreement API 3
Service Qualification API 3
Quote API 3
Address API 3
Appointment API 3
Service Quality Management API 3
Test Management API 3
Change Management API 3
Resource Order API 3
Service Ordering API 3
Resource Catalog API 3
Resource Inventory API 3
Entity Provisioning API 3
Service Catalog API 3
Service Inventory API 3
Digital Service Management API 3
Location API 3
Loyalty API 3
Shopping Cart API 3

18 Open APIs: Turning business strategy into reality

 www.tmforum.org

Interested in participating in the Open API program?

Contact Joann O'Brien,
Vice President, Open APIs & Ecosystems
jobrien@tmforum.org