AT&T and Colt Technology Services implemented MEF’s Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO) Sonata APIs to automate network ordering.

The two companies say it’s a telecom industry first — and it comes as MEF launched its pilot MEF 3.0 LSO Sonata certification program for inter-provider service automation along with an LSO Sonata software development kit (SDK) with APIs for inter-provider serviceability, product inventory, quoting, and ordering.

The certification program and the SDK are parts of MEF’s ongoing effort to standardize multiple sets of LSO APIs that enable service automation across providers, said MEF CTO Pascal Menezes. While the initial focus is on automating ordering of carrier Ethernet, the goal is to eventually extend this automation to other MEF 3.0 services including SD-WAN, security, optical transport, and IP.

“Together, these important steps will accelerate implementation of standardized LSO Sonata APIs worldwide, driving frictionless inter-provider business processes and faster service delivery across the service provider community,” Menezes said.

More than 50 services providers and technology vendors globally support the adoption of LSO Sonata APIs, added MEF COO Kevin Vachon. “My guess is that will go from 50 to 60 today and then 70 to 80 in the next couple months,” Vachon said. He expects to see several operators move into limited production deployments in 2019, with even more to follow in 2020.

A handful of the 50 include CenturyLink, Equinix, Cisco, Ericsson, Orange, Verizon, and Vodafone. But the first two companies to take these Sonata APIs into production deployments are AT&T and Colt. AT&T can now place automated orders for Colt’s Ethernet services using MEF’s LSO Sonata APIs.

“The first iteration here is automation of orders,” Vachon said. “There are a lot of access services that AT&T buys from Colt in the U.K., and this automates the process.”

In addition to automating orders on Colt’s network, this enables AT&T to validate site addresses, check service availability, and get quotes. Plus, AT&T’s global customers who have sites located in Colt’s network footprint can improve service qualification and ordering times from days or weeks, to minutes. Additionally, the notification functionality in the MEF API allows AT&T to track the progress of the order and receive near real-time updates from Colt’s system through the delivery process.

This also has significant implications across the industry because it demonstrates how any carrier can use these standardized APIs instead of disparate, proprietary systems to manage different aspects of their networks. It benefits both buyers and sellers of telecom services because it accelerates delivery cycle times, eliminates manual order handling, and reduces human error, Vachon said. “If we can get everybody supporting the same APIs, it will benefit the entire industry,” he explained.

The new certification program and SDK aim to make this industry-wide support even easier, Menezes said, adding that MEF teamed up with the TM Forum so that the Sonata APIs will work with the TM Forum Open APIs. “This means that any carrier that has invested in TM Forum APIs, Sonata works for them, too,” Menezes said. “This collaboration helps telcos protect their investments.”

The LSO Sonata APIs combine service-agnostic TM Forum Open APIs with MEF 3.0 service definitions, thus protecting service providers’ investments in both MEF and TM Forum while accelerating time to market and time to revenue for these services. The full suite of planned LSO Sonata APIs deals with serviceability, product inventory, quoting, ordering, trouble ticketing, contracts, and billing.

Additionally, the Sonata certification enables buyers and sellers of wholesale MEF 3.0 services to validate that the full suite of their APIs used for inter-provider business transactions comply with MEF standards. Companies can use it to develop, test, and certify all LSO Sonata APIs as they are released.

And the LSO Sonata SDK Release 3 includes a set of deliverables that enable market adoption of LSO Sonata APIs for serviceability (address validation, site queries, and product offering qualification), product inventory, quoting, and ordering.

Available on the MEF public GitHub, the SDK also includes Swagger data models, product payload specifications composed of MEF 3.0 services, and artifacts that allow a developer to build out these Sonata LSO APIs within their business systems.