“As a TM Forum active member, we get significant value from being able to automatically import the TM Forum reference frameworks, their inter-relations and to keep them updated as they evolve. We believe this can dramatically improve de facto member adoption, benefitting the whole ecosystem” ~ NOS Technology, Catalyst Champion
Enterprise Architecture tools can serve to unlock the value of the TM Forum Open Digital Architecture. This is a “vast amount of industry created assets ranging from the business process framework, through the framework and design principles of the architecture, to the specifications for standardized plug and play software of components, canvas and Open APIs”. It is therefore required that the import and refreshing of ODA content into an EA tool be simplified, and that the value extraction of ODA within such EA tools be AI supported.
For this Phase 1 Catalyst we propose to create an API and AI based mechanism to facilitate the import of certain functional blocks and components from the ODA catalogue into a EAM tool. This constrasts with the current state of affairs, which involves human based interpretation of the .pdf format documents and manual creation in the EA tools or, at most, schema mapping from .xls files into intermediary formats compatible with the EA tool import mechanisms. Using APIs bypasses this and can include more density in the models, such as cross-framework relations. It also removes the need for members to craft the integration mechanisms by themselves, which is a blocker to widespread adoption.