Eight new companies have officially endorsed TM Forum’s suite of Open APIs for digital service management.
DGIT, EnterpriseWeb, Ericsson, Huawei, IBM, BearingPoint/Infonova, Oracle and UXP Systems are the latest companies to back the initiative, which aims to boost telcos’ IT capabilities.
The APIs seek to speed up business transformation projects, reduce time-to-market for new services and open up telco platforms to the developer community.
The vendors, which have committed to incorporate the 18 exisiting APIs in their products, follow nine operators who backed the initiative in May.
Axiata, Bharti Airtel, BT, China Mobile, China Unicom, NTT-Group, Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone will position the APIs as “a preferred requirement” in their IT RFPs from January 2017.
TM Forum said the number of APIs is set to increase to more than 22 by the end of this year.
Joann O’Brien, VP of APIs and Ecosystems at TM Forum, commented: “By reducing integration friction and enhancing interoperability, TM Forum’s Open APIs are becoming a critical asset in enabling digital ecosystem management.
“Capabilities such as rapid partner onboarding and effective management of the full partner lifecycle – including automated service-level agreements, policy management and revenue settlement – are fundamental as the enterprise level embraces our sharing economy.”
Telcos are facing a number of issues as they look to transform their businesses.
Earlier this month, Telefónica Group CIO Phil Jordan and Three Ireland CTO David Hennessy outlined the challenges they had with engaging the management board and the lengthy time it takes.
In September, Telenor gave employees superhero monikers in a bid to drive through what it said were the necessary cultural changes.
See more on European Communications.