LSO APIs

Frictionless, end-to-end business automation of services, with and between providers.

Automating Business & Operational Functions

Standardized APIs are essential building blocks for automating business and operational interactions between buyers and sellers to deliver an efficient interconnected, automated ecosystem. Industry organizations—including MEF, the ITW Global Leaders’ Forum (GLF), and TM Forum—have collaborated to drive development and adoption of open, standardized APIs with the goal of unlocking the full potential of this ecosystem.

MEF has introduced sets of standardized business APIs and operational APIs that build upon and enhance TM Forum APIs to enable service providers to “invest once” and scale implementations with many partners and services across automated supply chains that extend to enterprises and cloud providers.

As part of MEF’s Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO), these APIs have been developed by MEF members as a fully standardized reference architecture and framework for enabling end-to-end business and operational automation and orchestration across multiple provider networks.

MEF’s LSO Framework

MEF has created the communication industry’s foundational architecture for a standards-based global ecosystem of automated networks.

The MEF LSO Framework describes the interface reference points for LSO APIs that are required to automate business process functions between ecosystem partners and operational functions between and within network service providers.

MEF refers to these reference points as follows:

Together, the interface reference points enable the full orchestration of digital services across service providers, their partners, cloud providers, and the Internet.

MEF LSO Reference Architecture

Enabling end-to-end service orchestration with and between providers, to deliver digital services to the enterprise.

diagram MEF LSO Framework

The LSO Interface Reference Points

LSO APIs for Business Automation Between Companies

Inter-provider APIs for automating business functions east-west between companies.

LSO Business APIs enable buyers and sellers of services to automate different stages of the business lifecycle—including product availability and pricing discovery, quoting, ordering, billing & settlement, and trouble ticketing—between their companies.

LSO Cantata

The LSO APIs at LSO Cantata allow enterprise customers to automate their business interactions with their service provider partners for activities such as quote, order, billing, and trouble ticketing.

Example: An enterprise customer orders a service from a service provider using a web portal that interfaces to the service provider using LSO Business APIs at LSO Cantata. The same interface is later used to instantiate and communicate a service interruption (i.e. trouble ticket).
LSO Sonata

The LSO APIs at LSO Sonata allow retail service providers to automate their business interactions with their suppliers/vendors for activities such as quote, order, billing, and trouble ticketing.

Example: A retail service provider orders a service from a wholesale connectivity operator using LSO Business APIs at LSO Sonata. The same interface is later used to instantiate and communicate a service interruption (i.e. trouble ticket).

LSO APIs for Operational Automation Between Companies

Inter-provider APIs for automating operational functions east-west between companies’ respective business support systems (BSSs).

LSO Operational APIs enable sellers of services to share key elements of the lifecycle of a service with their buyer customers, once it has been ordered and provisioned, all the way through to its decommissioning.

LSO Allegro

The LSO APIs at LSO Allegro allow enterprise, application and developer customers to automate their operational interactions with their service provider partners for activities such as service change, performance monitoring and fault management.

Example: A service-specific dynamic service policy enables the enterprise customer to determine what bandwidth they can access independently. LSO Allegro may also be used to share service-level fault information with the customer.
LSO Interlude

The LSO APIs at LSO Interlude coordinate a portion of digital LSO services within the partner domain that are managed by a service provider’s Service Orchestration Functionality (SOF), within the bounds and policies defined for the service.

Through LSO Interlude, the SOF may request initiation of technical operations or dynamic control behavior associated with a service with a partner network domain. Such requests must be within the constraints set forth in the policies associated with established services and performed without impacting business applications.

Example: To satisfy a customer request, the Service Orchestration Functionality may request changes to a CE-VLAN ID mapping at a UNI that resides in a partner domain. Interlude may also be used to share service-level fault information with the partner domain.

LSO APIs for Operational Automation Within Service Providers

Intra-provider APIs for automating operational functions north-south within the service provider, between its business support systems (BSS) and its operating support systems (OSS).

LSO Operational APIs also enable service providers to automate key elements of the lifecycle of a service internally, once it has been ordered and provisioned, all the way through to its decommissioning.

LSO Legato

The LSO APIs at LSO Legato enable a service provider to map product processes in the business layer of its systems to service processes in the operational layer of its systems. LSO Legato APIs cover actions such as service change, performance management, and fault monitoring.

Example: The business applications may, based on a customer order, use LSO Legato to request the instantiation of a connectivity service. LSO Legato may also allow the SOF to describe services and capabilities it is able to instantiate. Also, the service orchestration function may use LSO Legato to ask the business applications to place an order to a partner provider for the access service needed as a service component of an end-to-end connectivity service.

Explore MEF APIs

LSO APIs for Business Automation

LSO Business APIs enable buyers and sellers of services to automate different stages of the business lifecycle—including product availability and pricing discovery, quoting, ordering, billing & settlement, and trouble ticketing—between their companies.

Explore MEF's LSO APIs for Business Automation

LSO APIs for Operational Automation

LSO Operational APIs enable sellers of services to share key elements of the lifecycle of a service with their buyer customers and internally, once it has been ordered and provisioned, all the way through to its decommissioning.

Explore MEF's LSO APIs for Operational Automation

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