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Key Enablers for a Hybrid

Infrastructure Platform

Authors: Milind Bhagwat (BT), Shingo Horiuchi (NTT), Takayuki Nakamura (NTT), Stephen Fratini (Ericsson), August-Wilhelm Jagau (Ericsson), Elaine Haher (Ericsson)

Contact: Stephen Fratini, stephen.fratini@ericsson.com

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Platform Concept

▪ “The platform business model enables interactions between producers and consumers of value. It achieves this goal through two mechanisms. First, a platform provides a plug-and-play infrastructure which encourages open participation by an external ecosystem of producers and consumers. Second, it lays out the rules of governance for the interactions that ensue.”

Source: Sangeet Paul Choudary, http://platformthinkinglabs.com/start-here/

▪ “A platform is a business based on enabling value-creating interactions between external producers and consumers. The platform provides an open, participative infrastructure for these interactions and sets governance conditions for them. The platform’s overarching purpose: to consummate matches among users and facilitate the exchange of goods, services, or social currency, thereby enabling value creation for all participants.”

Source: Choudary, Sangeet Paul; Van Alstyne, Marshall W.; Parker, Geoffrey G.; Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy and How to Make Them Work for You

▪ Example platform-based businesses: Airbnb, Alibaba, Amazon, Azure (Microsoft), eBay, Facebook, Instagram, KAYAK, Pinterest, YouTube, Twitter, Wikipedia, Uber, Upwork

▪ This is in contrast to pipeline-based businesses with linear value chains.

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Platform vs. Pipeline Model

▪ Source: Choudary, Sangeet Paul; Van Alstyne, Marshall W.; Parker, Geoffrey G.; Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy and How to Make Them Work for You

“Platforms beat pipelines because platforms scale more efficiently by eliminating gatekeepers.” Example: Coursera vs. a college / university

“Platforms beat pipelines because platforms unlock new sources of value creation and supply.” Example: Airbnb vs. an hotel chain

“Platforms beat pipelines by using data-based tools to create community feedback loops.”

▪ For virtualized functions, objective metrics could also be used, in addition to subjective consumer feedback.

“Platforms invert the firm.”

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BT and NTT Regarding Platforms

▪ BT

BT’s Compute Management System (CMS) is a ‘platform enabling platform’ – Professor Jeff Parker, co-author of “Platform Revolution”

In building a platform to help BT serve BT customers with the best choice and control, we have also built a platform that can be used by any organisation wanting to operate in the digital economy without having to build and manage their own platform. Being part of a digital commercial ecosystem means the best chance of everyone benefiting from the ‘network effects’ of a digital platform. – John Gillam, BT

Also, see Slides #20-24

▪ NTT

The background of Integrated NW Operation System in NTT: NTT is shifting the traditional OSS silos towards a Platform architecture and associated APIs, with an expanded management domain to realize vertical industrial collaboration.

The motivation of Integrated NW Operation System in NTT: To accelerate B2B2X, we explore "Model Driven Framework" with a common model across Service/Resource Layers, which enables the agility and efficiency in the service release with unified end-to-end network management.

Also, see Slides #18 and #19

4

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TM Forum Digital Platform Reference Architecture (DPRA)

▪ The current platform-driven economic transformation is expect to evolved and spread across the entire world economy.

▪ The lack of open standards will lead to either an unmanageable proliferation of platforms and APIs, or a massive consolidation around a few competing de facto standards.

In either case, as additional platform-based ecosystems become connected and as more value is created across multiple platform based ecosystems, there will be increased interoperating costs and reduced agility with regard to value creation. This will eventually inhibit innovation.

▪ TM Forum has successfully driven Communications industry-wide convergence on best practices to operate, manage and monetize communications services that, for decades, have been delivered under a Service Provider Business Model that shares several key characteristics with the Platform Business Model.

▪ The TM Forum has several assets that can be of immediate benefit in the transition to a Platform Business Model:

Frameworx - providing the Business Processes, Information, Functions, Metrics and Best Practices

Open APIs - derived from a common information model and developed using common design patterns to reduce integration challenges

Catalyst - these allow members to share resources and risk to quick determine if approaches are viable and provide example solutions

It is recognized these assets will need to evolve as requirements from the Platform Business Model emerge.

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Digital Platform Reference Architecture Views

▪ TM Forum Business Platform View – The specific subset of Business Capabilities taken from the TM Forum Frameworx, or elsewhere, that constitute the digital ecosystem capabilities or functions needed for that Business Platform to operate.

▪ TM Forum Actualization Platform View – The underlying infrastructure of edge to hyper-scale datacenters and networks that host the software components that make up the Business Platform, enabled by reusable technical capabilities that are required to operate in an agile and efficient manner.

▪ TM Forum Business Capabilities view – The universe of Business Capabilities as represented by the TM Forum Frameworx that: a developer of a Business Platform may choose to define their ecosystem or a developer of an Actualization Platform may choose to define technical capabilities.

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Hybrid Infrastructure Platform (HIP) – Definition

▪ A Hybrid Infrastructure Platform (HIP) is a Platform that exposes capabilities for the management of a hybrid network, compute and storage infrastructure.

The term “hybrid” is mostly focused on the mixture of existing Physical Network Functions (PNFs) and the new Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs) to use the ETSI NFV term or Service Functions to use the IETF term.

Note: TM Forum Information Framework is now using the term “Resource Function” to emphasize that the functions are not just network but also entail storage and compute aspects.

▪ The HIP Blueprint was defined in TM Forum TR262 R16.5 by the ZOOM project. TR262 R17.0 is work in progress and soon to be published.

▪ The methodology for defining the APIs in support of the HIP Platform Capabilities is fairly straightforward, i.e.,

define user stories and uses cases (e.g., in TR229A and TR255)

derive API and data model requirements from the user stories and use cases

prepare Change Requests on the various APIs (or request new APIs – less common).

▪ The TM Forum ZOOM project makes use of TM Forum artifacts (such as APIs and data models) to define a common way to expose the capabilities of an HIP.

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Hybrid Infrastructure Platform (HIP) - Key Enablers

▪ Re-use (with some updates) of TM Forum APIs

Platform Admin: possible use of Digital Service Management (DSM) API

Security: TMF644 Privacy Management API REST Specification

Continuous Improvement QA (analytics and metrics): possible use of OPNFV’s VNF Event Stream (VES)

Lifecycle Management On-boarding:

▪ TMF634 Resource Catalog Management API REST Specification

▪ TMF650 Onboarding Management API REST Specification

Assurance: Performance Monitoring API, Alarm Management API, Performance Threshold (all three are work in progress for TM Forum Release 17.0)

Fulfillment:

▪ TMF 664 Resource Function Configuration and Activation API

▪ Resource Inventory API

General: Topology API (new API work based on prior catalyst project)

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Hybrid Infrastructure Platform (HIP) - Key Enablers

▪ Other key enablers (not specific to APIs)

TR255 Resource Function – Activation and Configuration (use cases and requirements for TMF 664 Resource Function Configuration and Activation API)

Connectivity Patterns – TM Forum document TR255A

Specification Requirements for Resource Functions - TM Forum document TR255B

Procurement and Onboarding of Virtualization Packages – TM Forum document IG1141

▪ License Management – TM Forum document IG1143

Lifecycle Compatibility – TM Forum document TR146

Identity and Naming – TM Forum document TR224

Orchestration and Policy – TM Forum specs IG1139 and IG1140 (work in progress)

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HIP Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for Rel. 17.011

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HIP - Business Platform View

But…How is this Implemented?

What Supports the Business Platform?

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DPRA - HIP Use Case

Curation

Composition

Sales

Service / Support

Trading

Tenant Ecosystem

Actualization

Platform

Physical Layer

IaaS Layer

PaaS Layer

Business Layer

4G/5G

Access Network

Actualization Platform

Guides

Development

Business Platform View

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Related TM Forum Catalyst Projects – May 2017

▪ 5G Service Operations - Leveraging Open Source innovation

This Catalyst will deliver “Network as a Service” with a wide range of SLA characteristics based on multiple 5G and legacy network technologies suitable for multiple industry verticals outlined in TR 262 Hybrid Network Management Platform (extends DPRA Platform principles).

▪ Beyond Sales: Powering IoE Ecosystems with Open Platforms and APIs

This Catalyst will prototype the new stage of China Mobile’s Hierarchical Capability Openness Platform by exploring more intelligent, efficient, lucrative and secure operation models and extend API-based ecosystems to vertical industries like Smart City. Phase II looks to extend capability openness to multiple industries to make new revenue streams out from OSS/BSS, big data, IoT and Network capabilities. To do so, this Catalyst will explore the new generation API platform which is intelligent, efficient, personalized and secure..

▪ Enabling the Digital Marketplaces

This Catalyst features a large and diverse ensemble cast of industry leading organizations that seek to demonstrate the viability and value proposition of open Digital Service Marketplaces for supporting transparent and efficient virtual function ecosystems,thus enabling Platform Business Models and the Operations Center of the Future. Standard metadata, metrics and software patterns enable automated hand-offs of network services between all participants.

▪ Connected Citizen: Life in a Green, Clean, Smart City

This Catalyst will focus on the creation of a new service provider business platform for delivering innovative and secured smart services to improve the quality of life and safety of all citizens. The team is looking at ways to commercialize the platform it has developed to co-create replicable, business models for smart cities the world over.

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Related TM Forum Catalyst Projects – May 2017

▪ Real Virtuality - Phase II

This Catalyst looks to operate a nimble and cost-optimized business that is highly adaptable to support CEOs in their transformation mission and will provide an intelligent self-management operations to run the dynamic future network service platforms seamlessly spanning across collaborating DSPs, which is programmable and intuitive for operations users by simply using business and technology policies.

▪ ZOOM Platform for IoT and Anything as a Service

The objective of this Catalyst is to deliver agility, experience and efficiency to service providers and expose TM Forum Open APIs to 3rd party developers to create new revenue streams enabled by network slicing, edge computing, and a service marketplace.

▪ Building Solutions with Hybrid Network Orchestration Platform and Open API's

The objective of this Catalyst is to reduce time to market for new services and development by using flexible service modeling and network abstraction capabilities that require no software programming effort and will work seamlessly with TM Forum’s Open API’s.

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TM Forum Position on Open Source

From IG1119, ZOOM position on Open Source and Open System, R14.5.1

▪ The TM Forum Strategy and Adoption Subcommittee has taken the following position in regards to TM Forum APIs:

TM Forum will provide our APIs for public/open download.

TM Forum APIs will continue to be primarily developed under the TM Forum license modes defined in the TM Forum IPR aqreement.

▪ TM Forum will encourage open source organizations to use our APIs, and we will encourage our catalyst teams to consider open source components as they build their solutions.

▪ TM Forum will not employ open source development at this time until IPR concerns can be addressed (both to protect the TM Forum members as well as to provide full traceability to the open source project using the TM Forum APIs).

▪ It should be noted that currently, TM Forum does not develop open source solutions. The Forum develops APIs (enablers) that allow solutions to be assembled from components provided by the industry at large. For example, the TM Forum does not create a trouble ticket system; rather, it creates trouble ticket APIs.

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Backup Material Additional Material

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NTT Integrated Network Operation System – Background 18

Time

Product

Service

ResourceEMS

OSS Collaboration

EMS

Service Collaboration

Platform Collaboration

Industry Collaboration

NGN（NW）

Virtualization（NW）

5G／IoT（NW）

Man

agem

ent

Do

mai

n

NMS

SMS

NMS

SMS

API

API

SaaS

PaaS

IaaSEMS

NMS

SMS

SaaS

PaaS

IaaSEMS

NMS

SMSAPI

SaaS

PaaS

IaaS

SaaS

PaaS

IaaS

SaaS

PaaS

IaaS

API

I/F

NTT should change the traditional OSS architecture to the future one to

realize the platform supporting the industries collaboration.

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XaaS(RaaS, IaaS, PaaS)

Model Driven Framework

NTT Integrated Network Operation System – Motivation 19

API

Network

LAN

Mu

lti-layer a

nd

Mu

lti-do

main

Orch

estr

ato

rs

API

API

AP

I

Middle B

Resource Management

Service Management

Product Management

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ｱﾌﾟﾘＮＷ：Logical Server: Logical

ＮＷ：Physical Server：Physical

ServiceNF NF

Service A Service B

Federation

Access Transmission Data centerCore

ServiceLayer

LogicalLayer

PhysicalLayer

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Logical Resource

Physical Resource

CFS/RFS

Specification

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The BT Information Systems Architecture: Process, Data, Business

Function (Platforms) and Software Services

“A process led, data centric, platform based, service orientated architecture that supports secure, and context based exposure of key

services/information to internal user and external customers via a wide variety of devices and portals/B2B”

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The BT Information Systems Architecture21

Domains Major grouping of business functions (eg manage customer) and associated architectural

platforms. Responsible for master data.

Platforms Next level of architectural decomposition of business functions (eg customer domain contains

the ‘customer and product’, ‘collaboration’ and ‘billing’ platforms)

Data Master data. Critical to supporting our key processes and management information. We must

master data and minimise replication.

Software Services How we connect out platforms (applications) – well specified APIs. Exposure our enterprise

data and support business processes eg place an order)

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The BT Information Systems Architecture22

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BT Platform23

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BT Architect Roles & Responsibilities24

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Hierarchy of Platforms - Encapsulation (from TR262)

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Hierarchy of Platforms – Open APIs (from TR262)

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Salient Aspects of HIP

▪ Manages the lifecycle of Resource Functions (RFs), examples of which are VNFs, PNFs, Network Services from ETSI NFV, and Service Functions and Service Function Chains from IETF

▪ Support for intent-based (supports top-down creation of RFs) and detailed-based (supports bottom-up, incremental creation of RFs)

Does not support flavor-based approach but there is a mapping from flavor-based to intent-based

▪ Supports RFs that are virtualized, physical or combinations thereof

▪ Supports both virtualization and application-specific aspects of an RF

▪ Covers both atomic and composite RFs in one platform

▪ Uses OLA management between the consumer and the provider of the HIP as opposed to detailed fault and performance management.

▪ Multiple variations of the HIP are possible. The key is to provide standards APIs that allow for multiple variations.

▪ Uniform approach for onboarding RFs (from various virtualization technologies) – this includes a catalog management API and model for various business and technical aspects of the RF package

▪ Uniform approach metrics collection and report on RFs