There is a growing awareness in the telecom industry that agreement is essential on product models so that products can be transacted automatically and consistently between buyers and sellers throughout the entire supply chain.
The LSO Payload Factory program enables the industry to quickly generate consensus on product data schemas that can be used with LSO APIs to eliminate market fragmentation and wasted resources.
How will MEF’s new LSO Product Modelers group accelerate the availability and relevance of LSO Product Payloads?
Today, each supplier attempts to provide machine-language descriptions (otherwise known as “product data schema”), often embedded inside APIs (Application Programmable Interfaces), which they use to interface between their system and those of their customers. However, lack of consistency results in unnecessary business friction between buyers and sellers who devote valuable resources to maintaining proprietary business interfaces with each existing or potential partner.
The very important first step to eliminating this business friction was achieved when MEF started making available many open standard LSO (Lifecycle Service Orchestration) APIs, which are now being implemented by an increasing number of global service providers and solution providers.
An important design feature of LSO APIs is that they can, without being altered in any way, be used together with suitably designed product schemas to handle business for a limitless range of products.
Secondly, MEF has created a library of open source, standardized product models in the form of data schema that can be “blended” on demand with the following LSO APIs—POQ, Quote, Product Offering Availability Discovery, Pricing Discovery, Product Order, and Product Inventory—and makes the new data schema available on the LSO Marketplace.
Through a survey, MEF determines that there is demand for a standardized product model and data schema for “Photonic Wavelength” services that haven’t previously been standardized at the service level in MEF.
One of the MEF members contributes their data schema for a photonic wavelength offering that is currently sold to their partners. MEF then introduces it to other MEF members through the MEF Accelerator Black Hail.
After several iterations of review and proposed changes by other MEF members in MEF’s Accelerator Black Hail, a new version of the photonic wavelength service product data schema is then made available on the LSO Marketplace website, which can be blended with the LSO APIs.
A standardization process is then initiated in MEF, resulting in two new MEF standards: Product Requirements and Use Cases for Photonic Wavelength Services and then the Product Payload and Developer Guide for Photonic Wavelength Services.
The LSO Payload Factory is a unique framework in which to rapidly prototype product data models and get feedback from industry peers, resulting in your product model forming the basis of a more widely adopted pre-standard product data schema.
As a MEF member, you have access to all the latest product models. Engage with your peers and subject-matter experts to determine priorities and “product model” standardized product data schema. Our current initiatives are available in the LSO Payload Factory Incubation Group on the MEF Members’ Wiki.
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Go to the Member Wiki