IG1157 Digital Platform Reference Architecture Concepts and Principles R19.0.1

This TM Forum Digital Platform Reference Architecture White Paper explores the digital industry landscape and best practices, analyzes how they can be tuned to the communication industry and provides a blueprint that CSPs and their ecosystem partners can leverage along their digital transformation journeys. This architectural blueprint addresses two key agility challenges using a simple set of platform architectural concepts: Agility in participating in ‘Digital Platform based Business Models’ through use of reusable concepts and components integrated using exposed external services through Open APIs. Agility in internal operations through use of Platform based IT Architecture for OSS/BSS where these Platforms expose management services integrated and orchestrated through Open APIs. This is the TM Forum’s Open Digital Architecture (ODA). Both possibilities support the evolution from legacy software architectures to modern concepts of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and microservices, and agile delivery models based on DevOps principles. There is strong evidence that such approaches lead to substantial reduction in costs and time to market. CSPs can chose to implement platform concepts externally or internally or both. The advantage of doing both is that internal management services can be readily exposed to the partners with minimal configuration – largely of security since the platform approach inherently supports Software Defined Perimeters – and adds an increased level of agility and cost reduction.