The inclusion of the five major players into the category means that 1 billion subscribers are now accessing networks that are running on ODA.
TM Forum, an industry body for communication service providers and suppliers that has been spearheading the movement, describe ODA as a standardised cloud-native enterprise architecture blueprint.
Companies that are operating on an ODA model are touted to be more agile, offer a better customer experience and achieve greater operational efficiency, because IT solutions developed through ODA are easier and cheaper to deploy, integrate and upgrade.
To help more CSPs achieve ODA status, TM Forum hyperscaler members including AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft have all built ODA Canvases, the execution environment for an ODA component.
TM Forum said the canvases offer a standardised cloud-native operating environment to significantly reduce the cost, complexity, and risks for CSPs deploying and operating ODA-compliant software in a multi-cloud environment.
“The industry’s commitment to ODA is clear. CSPs, hyperscalers and major software vendors are driving greater simplicity and moving towards a single, AI-driven plug-and-play future," said Nik Willetts, CEO of TM Forum.
"Achieving ‘Running on ODA’ status is no easy feat – it takes solid commitment from technology teams to drive real change – spanning skills, governance, and technical innovation. It is extremely rewarding to have some of the world’s largest and most nimble CSPs achieving this status in their organizations,” he continued.
TM Forum only started running on ODA assessments 20 months ago, so to touch 1 billion subscribers, Willets said was a massive achievement.
In addition to the CSP milestone, TM Forum also announced yesterday that 8 leading telecoms vendors had achieved Ready for ODA status for one or more of its product lines.
Alvatross, CSG, Ericsson, Hansen Technologies, Huawei, Netcracker, Oracle, and Whale Cloud were all named as building products in alignment with ODA principles.
"The telecoms industry has a pressing need to change the way software is procured, integrated, operated and upgraded. This requires a fresh approach to managing the software lifecycle if we are to reignite growth in the industry,” Willets said on this development.
While ‘Ready for ODA’ is not a formal product evaluation or endorsement, the criteria are assessed jointly by vendors and TM Forum’s CTO office using an evidence-based evaluation focused on six key aspects required to deliver successful business outcomes via ODA.
These include principles & rules, skills, Open APIs, ODA Components, contribution to ODA and real-world implementation.
