[Kevin Vachon, CCO, MEF, during a press conference at ITW 2019]
“There’s no doubt this will change how carriers interact and operate in the industry. Our interactions are now more cost-efficient, flexible and error-free,” said Roman Pacewicz, chief product officer, AT&T Business. “We kicked off interoperability discussions and trials three years ago and gained important insights that will help create and refine industry standards under the guidance of MEF. The transformation of networks to a dynamic, on-demand, software-centric, cloud-based model opens up opportunities for everyone.”
MEF’s set of standardised LSO Sonata APIs creates a service-agnostic approach for inter-provider service automation that can be adopted and replicated across all carriers.
This new capability will drive further collaboration across the industry based on MEF standards for interoperability, benefitting both buyers and sellers of telecom services by accelerating delivery cycle times, eliminating manual order handling and reducing errors.
“Today’s announcement is the culmination of a long journey. This project started as a Proof of Concept (PoC,) and it is incredibly exciting to reach this stage,” added Mirko Voltolini, head of network on-demand, Colt. “We are proud to have been part of this process from the beginning. With the adoption of LSO Sonata APIs in our production network, we are improving efficiencies, reducing manual processes, and helping to improve how we all work together as an industry.”
AT&T can now place automated orders for Colt’s Ethernet Services using MEF’s LSO Sonata APIs. This enables AT&T to validate site addresses, check service availability, get a quote and place automated orders on Colt’s network. The streamlined back-end communication between the two means AT&T’s global customers who have sites located in Colt’s network can significantly improve service qualification and ordering times from days or weeks, to minutes. Additionally, AT&T can track the progress of the order, receiving real-time updates from Colt’s system.
“We are thrilled with the strong and growing industry support for LSO Sonata APIs for inter-provider service automation," continued Nan Chen, president, MEF. “MEF especially appreciates the pioneering efforts of AT&T and Colt to implement LSO Sonata APIs in production environments. We couldn’t be more excited to see the creation and growth of this ecosystem that will support dynamic service automation moving forward.”
