Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Progress Update: MEF LSO Sonata APIs for Inter-Provider Service Automation



MEF Annual Meeting – July/August 2019, David Ball, Principal Engineer, Cisco and LSO Committee Co-Chair, MEF, shares a progress update on the standardization of LSO Sonata APIs used for inter-provider service automation.

“LSO is going to be the biggest thing that helps transform the industry over the next few years. It’s really exciting to be part of this thing that’s so needed to help service providers integrate with each other and speed up the way that they can deliver services to their end users. LSO Sonata is the API that is key to that.”

LSO Sonata APIs relate to the interface reference point within MEF’s LSO Reference Architecture (MEF 55) that supports business-to-business interactions between service providers.  The full suite of planned LSO Sonata APIs deals with serviceability (address validation, site queries, product offering qualification), product inventory, quoting, ordering, trouble ticketing, contracts, and billing.

In June 2019, MEF introduced LSO Sonata SDK (Software Development Kit) Release 3, which includes a set of deliverables that enable market adoption of LSO Sonata APIs for serviceability (address validation, site queries, and product offering qualification), product inventory, quoting, and ordering. The SDK includes published and draft standards listed below covering business requirements, use cases, and attributes that serve as the basis for the associated APIs and data models. Available on the MEF public GitHub (https://github.com/MEF-GIT/MEF-LSO-Sonata-SDK), the SDK also includes Swagger data models, product payload specifications composed of MEF 3.0 services, and other artifacts that enable a developer to rapidly build out these Sonata LSO APIs within their business systems.

  • Ethernet Ordering Technical Standard: Business Requirements and Use Cases (MEF 57.1)
  • Address, Service Site, and Product Offering Qualification Management: Requirements and Use Cases (MEF 79 Draft Standard)
  • Quote Management: Requirements and Use Cases (MEF 80 Draft Standard)
  • Product Inventory Management: Requirements and Use Cases (MEF 81 Draft Standard) 

 To learn more about MEF LSO Sonata APIs for inter-provider service automation, download this FAQ document:  https://www.mef.net/images/LSO-Sonata-FAQ-August-2019.pdf

To explore the latest on LSO innovations and engage with industry-leading service and technology experts, attend MEF19 (http://www.MEF19.com), held 18-22 November 2019 in Los Angeles, California.