How TM Forum’s ODA is accelerating telco innovation

TM Forum's ODA represents a transformative framework for the telecoms industry, enabling unprecedented agility and innovation by breaking down complex BSS/OSS architectures into modular components. How can the ODA empower CSPs to become more responsive digital service providers, capable of rapidly adapting to evolving technological landscapes and customer expectations?

In my last article, I introduced and provided a high-level overview of TM Forum’s Open Digital Architecture (ODA), and its transformative power to modernise BSS/OSS for the digital telco era.

Here, I’ll explore how the ODA and its related open standards and frameworks, not only enable digital transformation but also accelerate innovation. By simplifying integrations, shortening concept-to-cash cycles, enhancing service delivery and elevating customer experiences, the ODA is crucial in driving telco to techco transformation and unlocking new avenues for growth.

The practice of using open standards and common language is not new or exclusive to telcos, but has become a powerful catalyst for innovation across many other industries too, including banking, healthcare, manufacturing and finance.

By enabling companies to build solutions on top of existing technologies rather than starting from scratch, open standards and frameworks reduce development time and costs, foster collaboration, and accelerate innovation cycles. This approach enables the creation of diverse, cutting-edge products and services, delivering substantial benefits to both vendors and service providers alike.

Innovation for vendors

The ODA’s modular approach to solution design encourages vendors to develop highly scalable, cloud-native, microservices-based components that can be mixed and matched across multiple environments. This modularity allows vendors to rapidly create and release purpose-built solutions tailored to specific telco needs and conditions.

ODA components are designed to be:

• Independently deployable
• Easily replaceable
• Highly interoperable

Additionally, by incorporating the Information Framework (SID) and Business Process Framework (eTOM), the ODA simplifies collaboration with other industry players and partners within a shared ecosystem. Vendors can create innovative bundled offerings by delivering solutions that integrate smoothly into a telco’s partner network.

The ODA blueprint allows vendors to accelerate R&D by minimising the effort required for traditional tasks like architecture, integration, data model alignment and business process modelling, freeing up time to focus on developing unique value features and faster responses to industry needs.

To recognise supplier products that comply with ODA principles, TM Forum introduced the Ready for ODA award, which is granted to vendor products that meet a set of qualifying evaluation criteria, including adherence to these principles and active collaboration as part of the TM Forum community.

Innovation for CSPs

For service providers, TM Forum’s suite of frameworks and standards reduces complexity and enhances flexibility by simplifying interoperability between vendors and third parties. The common language approach makes it easier for them to adopt and implement new technologies, enabling faster creation of innovative services.

CSPs can minimise friction within their technology ecosystems, enabling faster cycles for launching new services. This increased efficiency also enhances customer experience, as telcos can respond to user demands with greater speed and precision, delivering more consistent services and continually evolving their offerings.

For CSPs, TM Forum also introduced the Running on ODA status for those that have implemented and are actively using ODA in their operational environments, similar to how vendors are acknowledged with the “Ready for ODA” award.

The future of BSS/OSS architecture

The telecoms industry must evolve beyond outdated, vertically integrated business models to unlock future growth opportunities. As digital transformation accelerates, the ODA represents not only a technical framework, but also a strategic approach to reimagining BSS/OSS infrastructure, and will play a crucial role in helping CSPs to navigate complex technological landscapes and deliver exceptional digital experiences.

Embracing TM Forum standards including the ODA and Open APIs enables CSPs and vendors to address critical challenges such as interoperability, complexity and time-to-market. With these foundations in place, CSPs can finally evolve into an era of AI-driven organisations with zero-touch integration, autonomous operations, and open, adaptable infrastructure.