Open Digital Framework

Solutions to ignite growth

The traditional telco model is under pressure to evolve. The telecoms industry has three to five years to Inspire, Design and Build a new platform-based ecosystem.

Telecom industry: redefining its value proposition for growth

The traditional telco model needs to change due to an emerging AI and automation-driven connectivity service landscape, which is also quickly combining with a shift to cloud services. All parts of the telecoms industry are challenged to look to the future and redefine their value proposition by removing technical debt through the use of Open APIs, leveraging automation (including AI), and seeking integration with enterprise IT, as they reorientate themselves for growth.

TM Forum’s Open Digital Framework (ODF) supports the telecoms industry to create agile solutions that inspire new ways to implement services, where the design is based on autonomous AI-driven networks, and show how to build composable architectures which are then run within both a CSP and supplier organizations.

Read the blog on 'creating agile solutions'

Inspire your organization's growth

As the market shifts from vertically integrated solutions to horizontal platforms the ability to create trusted strong automated partnerships as part your Connectivity/Network-as-a-Service offering will be a key strategic differentiator.

TM Forum’s marketplaces collaboration work recognizes the evolution from traditional monolithic closed marketplaces to a new era of open federated or multi-marketplaces providing business guidance and architectures to create customer centric ecosystem solutions.

Business Capabilities

Capitalizing on new value ecosystems, telco’s need a culture of experimentation to realize scalable innovation. The detailed concept-to-design framework provides a toolkit for value pool identification and value network design, leveraging a library of reusable value streams and capabilities of the telco, being captured in Business Architecture as part of a series of assets supporting portfolio management.

How to..... Capability Framework

Multi-Marketplace

Building and deploying end-to-end solutions for vertical markets requires trusted ecosystem partnerships between network operators, Hyperscalers and other platform aggregators, systems integrators, and software suppliers.

TM Forum members are taking the lead here, demonstrating how the various players, old and new, can achieve the ability to easily work together to ensure that partner functionality can be quickly and automatically integrated into the heart of any new services offering. This is what we are calling multi-marketplace readiness.

How to..... Multi-marletplace toolkit

Automated Partnering

Automated partnering is about establishing a suite of APIs and methods of working which will support partnering with little to no human contact (Zero Touch Partnering) across a diverse range of service types and suit the needs of all service providers.

Zero Touch, in essence, means Zero IT development and provides our industry of Communications and Digital Service Providers an approach to unleash new services and technologies.

How to..... Automate Partnerships

CaaS: Intent-driven services

Connectivity-as-a-Service (CaaS) aims to standardize how CSPs work with partners to deliver end-to-end connectivity service on-demand, using a customer intent-driven approach. CaaS can only discover CFSs from partners when an agreement is already in place, and is made possible through Zero Touch Partnering (ZTP).

How to..... CaaS: Intent-driven services

Network as a Service Transformation

Network as a Service (NaaS) is a critical foundation for telco-to-techco transformation and becoming a platform service provider, and it is widely seen as a digital enabler to deliver on-demand network services to enterprise and developer ecosystems.

How to..... NaaS: transformation

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Design your autonomous network

TM Forum members have delivered the FIRST AI/AN framework as part of the ODA. This recognizes the need for a set of globally agreed standards to enable the industry to simplify working together and to implement the technological and operational complexity required for organizations to succeed.

AI & Autonomous Networks

G o v e r n a n c e

AI Governance:

AI maturity models
AI management APIs
Checklists, model cards...

Find more: AI Governance Toolkit

Data Governance:

Data governance guides
API engine
Maturity models

Find out more: Data and Analystics toolkit

Implementation

Intent:

TM Forum Intent ontology
Intent lifecycle management
Intent management API
Intent common model

Find out more: Intent toolkit

AIOps:

AIOps lifecycle
AIOps management framework
End to end use cases

Find out more: AIOps toolkit

Measuring & Managing Anatomy:

Measuring and monitoring autonomy
MAMA framework guidebook
Autonomous operations Maturity Model

Find out more: MAMA toolkit

Applications

Autonomous Network (AN):

AN maturity levels
Reference architecture
Effectiveness indicators

Find out more: Autonomous Network toolkit

Connectivity as a Service (CaaS):

Vision and strategy guide
CaaS reference architecture
CaaS API profile

Find out more: CaaS solution

Assurance (CLADRA):

Closed loop AI models
Implementation architecture
Automation APIs

Find out more: CLADRA toolkit

Digital Twins for Digital Intelligence (DT4DI):

DT4DI ontology
Reference architecture
Lifecycle management
Maturity models

Find out more: DT4DI reference architecture

Discover more about AI and Automation

Request more downloadable AI/AN content

Build your composable architecture

Building from the bottom up, the essential starting point for all players is to ensure their internal systems and processes are constructed on a composable architecture. This is the focus of TM Forum’s Open Digital Architecture (ODA), providing the key to plug-and-play software integration:

ODA Open APIs provide the only industry repository of high quality, universally available, easy-to-use Open APIs that use the latest technology to deliver a great developer experience for both the industry and other Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs).

Open API Table

ODA Components are independently deployable pieces of software, typically built out of one or more microservices. They have an “envelope” that provides metadata to describe their core function and specify which Open APIs they expose or depend upon.

ODA Component Directory

ODA Canvas is an execution environment for ODA Components and the release automation part of a CI/CD pipeline. It's the architecture equivalent of painting by numbers and removes the guess work when integration network and products.

More about ODA Canvas

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Build your composable architecture

Building from the bottom up, the essential starting point for all players is to ensure their internal systems and processes are constructed on a composable architecture. This is the focus of TM Forum’s Open Digital Architecture (ODA), providing the key to plug-and-play software integration through its use of easy-to-use Open APIS, ODA Component and ODA Canvas:

Business

Information
Systems

Deployment
& Runtime

Implementation

Governance

Interactive ODA Map

Click on the interactive map to explore ODA.

Discover more about ODA

Request more information on AI /Automation

Run your organization using ODA

TM Forum has created two accreditations, so that whether you are a CSP or supplier you can showcase that you contribute and collaborate on creating ODA assets and, above all, use its principles and practices within your day-to-day working process and tools: