1. Catalyst Project : Delivering Open Cloud Ecosystems for Digital SMEs – TMF API Reuse

2. What do Open APIs mean for our organization
APIs are critical to a Digital Economy
Speed
Months
Days or Hours
Millions
Thousands
90-99%
99,99 %
Reactive
Proactive
Silo
Integrated
Cost
Quality
Agility
E2E Customer Experience
Unified APIs deliver flexibility and agility
Open APIs enable new partnership models to enhance services we offer Customers
APIs enable Systems Transformation, for example by ‘wrapping’ Legacy IT systems in APIs
API Exposure is the Engine Driving Digital Services, Building Digital Ecosystem and Driving New Revenues

3. Where are TMF Open APIs being used in our Catalyst
Catalyst: Delivering Open Cloud Ecosystems for Digital SMEs with Zero Touch Orchestration
Customer Management
HTML5/ Angular JS
API Mart
TMF620
Product Catalog Management
TMF622
Product Ordering
Ordering Wizard
SaaS Marketplace
Portal
Portal
Invercloud
TMF641 Service Ordering
API Gateway (API Exchange)
Infosys
(APIX “Apigee”)
Service Management
Service Assurance
&
Dynamic Modelling
Centina
Systems
Service Orchestration
[Service Catalogue]
Huawei CO - IES
Management
Resource
TMF Open API
Huawei CO - IES
Technology
Domain Orchestration
[Resource Catalogue]
Functional Component
Huawei CO - IES

4. Provide links to artefacts
White Paper
A comprehensive white paper detailing the approach to re-using TMF Open API’s specific to this catalyst as well as listing out gaps and recommendations that resulted. Find it here!
New API Definition
New Service and Resource Catalog APIs defined can be found here!
Other API Opportunities
Other full API specifications that have counterparts as identified for development by TMF, but, have been comprehensively defined by Vodafone. Access here!
API Mapping and Gap Analysis
TMF Open APIs in scope of catalyst that have been comprehensively mapped and compared against counterparts as defined in Vodafone. See spreadsheet here!

5. Scope of API re-use and contribution

6. Benefits of using TMF Open APIs
Headline Benefit
Reusability
Abstraction and Loose Coupling
Composability
Delivering
Capex avoidance & Time-to-Market APIs are designed with reuse in mind; they can be re-used in many solutions without further modification.
Business Agility Enablement
Supports transformation, M & A and step-wise evolution.
Avoid Vendor lock-in Standards-based interfaces abstract from implementation and vendor specific details.
Agility and Capex avoidance
Enable transformation (eg: “wrapping” legacy applications) and minimise impact of change.
Revenue Uplift Well designed APIs enable capabilities to be re-packaged in new and innovative ways.
Downstream Digital Ecosystems enabled
€ savings / avoidance / revenue
Transfer

7. Hypermedia extensions for TMF APIs

8. Need for Dynamic APIs Dynamic
TMF Open Digital API program provides a set of standard REST based APIs that enable rapid, repeatable, and flexible integration.
However, there is significant manual effort, hard wiring the integration and any changes to the API calls for changes in the API consumer
To truly make the APIs dynamic, these APIs need to be:
Discoverable
Self -Descriptive
Interactive
Dynamic
Dynamic API enables transformation of interactions in the digital ecosystem from its current static, non-responsive and brittle nature to a more flexible, loosely coupled way

9. Hypermedia API – Need & Specifications
Hypermedia APIs provide a shared vocabulary for consumers to communicate with the API and also guide the next set of interactions that they can perform. Such Hypermedia APIs can be built with the support of support of JSON-LD, Hydra Core vocabulary and Schema.org
JSON-LD (JSON for linking data) - Organizes and connects the data in JSON by linking the data
The Hydra Core Vocabulary provides a common vocabulary for communication between clients and servers
Schema.Org provides common vocabulary for structured data on the Internet.
JSON-LD (JSON for linking data) - Organizes and connects the data in JSON by linking the data.  It allows an application to start at one piece of Linked Data, and follow embedded links to other pieces of Linked Data
The Hydra Core Vocabulary provides a common vocabulary for communication between clients and servers. Hydra provides context for the clients to understand the semantics of the data and perform next set of operations like Add, Update and Delete on the data
Schema.Org provides common vocabulary for structured data on the Internet, on web pages, in messages, and beyond covering entities like Product, Offers, Event, Health, etc.  Vocabulary covers entities, relationships between entities and actions, and can easily be extended through a well-documented extension model.

10. Approach to build Hypermedia API
Build Hypermedia APIs
Publish Context
Identify Interactions
Extend
Gap Analysis
Perform gap analysis to understand the gaps to publish the current TMF API as TMF Hypermedia API
Based on the gap analysis, if required, define extensions to the data model for TMF Hypermedia API
Identify the interactions to be exposed as part of the TMF Hypermedia API
Define and Publish model / schema to provide the context for the consumers of the TMF Hypermedia API
Publish TMF Hypermedia APIs with added JSON-LD, Hydra Core and Schema.Org vocabulary
Ways to extend TMF APIs and publish TMF Hypermedia APIs
01 - Align key SID entities and Schema.Org
02 – Use TMF SID entity model
We see convergence of our thoughts with the ‘Dynamic API project’s (ref: TR254) end goal of providing loosely coupled, semantically interoperable APIs ,and propose this approach as future work item for Dynamic API program

11. Approach to build Hypermedia API
Build Hypermedia APIs
Publish Context
Identify Interactions
Extend
Gap Analysis
01 - Align key SID entities and Schema.Org
Map key TMF SID entities to Schema.org Entities.
This step will give a view on missing entities and attributes in Schema.org
The previous step will provide a view on extension (if required) for Schema.org. Entity.
Identify the operations which consumer could perform with the TMF API
Only extensions to standard schema.org format need to be published
Wrap the TMF APIs to adhere to Schema.Org (extended) format and with Hydra and JSON-LD vocabulary
02 – Use TMF SID entity model
Not required, as we are not adhering to schema.org format in this approach.
Identify the operations which consumer could perform with the TMF API
Publish the TMF SID entities at a centralized location.
Publish the TMF APIs with added Hydra and JSON-LD

12. Illustration with TMF 620 Product Catalog Management API
Hydra console
lanthaler.com/hydra/console/?url= /hydra/api-demo/v2/#
The entry point is defined in the above URL i.e.
link to the vocabulary:

13. Publish TMF SID Model as JSON-LD context for the Hypermedia API
Next steps
To build the next generation TMF Hypermedia APIs, use JSON-LD, Hydra core vocabulary
Publish TMF SID Model as JSON-LD context for the Hypermedia API
In an ecosystem, where Telco & non-Telco consumers co-exist, align required TMF SID entities and Schema.Org*
Newer formats namely JSON-LD, Hydra core and Schema.Org vocabulary provide the specifications to build Hypermedia APIs.
As Schema.org is widely accepted industry wide vocabulary used by global search engines, alignment of some of the TMF SID entities like ProductOffering to Schema.Org makes it easier to be adopted where Telco and non-Telco consumers co-exist in the digital ecosystem.
However, not all Telco entities need to follow the approach of adhering to schema.org format. We could realize good benefits if TMF SID Model could be published in simplistic way as Schema.Org and TMF APIs are enhanced to include operations using JSON-LD and Hydra Core vocabulary
* 10-20% of TMF SID entities (e.g. ProductOffering) need to be aligned. TMF to collaborate with Schema.Org for possible extensions to support Telco entities.

14. TMF Open