Open, discoverable application programming interfaces are key to Verizon’s domain-driven, platform-centric approach to network evolution, but communications service providers must work together on API interoperability to realize the promises of 5G, says Shoma Chakravarty, VP of IT Enterprise Architecture, who discussed the company’s approach at Digital Transformation North America.
Verizon sees value in Open APIs
Open, discoverable application program interfaces (APIs) are key to Verizon’s domain-driven, platform-centric approach to network evolution, but communications service providers (CSPs) must work together on API interoperability to realize the promises of 5G, according to Shoma Chakravarty, VP of IT Enterprise Architecture, who discussed the company’s approach at Digital Transformation North America.
“We have to figure this out,” Chakravarty said. “We’re all saying that APIs are important, yet we all have thousands of APIs. We have to come to a decision on which subset of those thousands we can standardize to maximize our shared value capture.”
Verizon alone has 15,000 APIs that have been developed over the years, and it’s likely that every other telco its size has a similar number. But without interoperability, CSPs won’t be able to deliver (and guarantee) services end to end across partners’ boundaries – a requirement in 5G network slicing.
Chakravarty relayed Verizon’s vision, first articulated by CEO Hans Vestberg and described in this article, that there are eight 5G “currencies” which must coalesce to make value and experiences real: Verizon envisions using these currencies to enable all types of distance-based applications, from remote surgery to smart manufacturing and autonomous vehicles, which can be orchestrated autonomously without human intervention. In the case of autonomous vehicles, for example, there are many potential capabilities and use cases that network slicing must address. “The car is a cradle for multiple devices,” Chakravarty says. “Imagine that each device would have many-to-many relationships with network slices.” For example, there could be a controller in the car sending asynchronous assurance-related data to the core offline, while a controller in the car for navigation expects real-time feedback based on the driver’s behavior and traffic.
“The dynamic elasticity of this ecosystem is something that is a source of great opportunity for us as technologists,” Chakravarty said, adding that it is a multi-dimensional ecosystem with many devices, edge facilities, many networks slices, lots of data that’s localized, and some data between clouds and devices. Importantly, all the knowledge about the ecosystem is centralized.
Chakravarty pointed to three building blocks that are critical for delivering ecosystem services: Chakravarty also stressed the importance of security by design in a platform approach, because exposing capabilities increases vulnerability significantly.
Verizon’s Global Technology organization has embarked on an exciting transformation journey, embracing cloud-native principles. During its evolution, the company has already learned some valuable lessons, Chakravarty concluded:
“We really have to build a community of practice around domain-driven design,” she said. “We’re breaking up the monolith, microservices aren’t a silver bullet if you don’t do it right; we’re very much advocating a platform-centric approach; we are not overlooking security.”