Telecommunications firm Alcatel-Lucent has launched a new consulting and professional services practice that will enable telcom companies to create new revenue opportunities and new services.
The new practice is designed to address the challenges developers face when integrating APIs and to help optimise an API programme, while also providing operators with a repeatable model for innovation.
Internal and external software developers will be exposed to the services as APIs, which will allow data sharing between applications, to provide access to technology assets and content within networks and promote development of applications.
By strategically creating APIs which provide access to technology assets and content within their networks, service providers promote the development of innovative applications which will create new revenue opportunities, improve operations and enhance customer experience.
Alcatel-Lucent’s consulting and professional services practice will support a lifecycle methodology for application programming interfaces (APIs), enabling operators to streamline the creation, deployment and management of network-based services.
The new API practice is coupled with Alcatel-Lucent’s API lifecycle methodology, which is licensed under Creative Commons.
Alcatel-Lucent’s flexible methodology follows three phases of Definition, Design and Deployment.
The Definition phase includes establishment of appropriate business objectives and matching evaluation parameters by looking at what can be done with service provider network assets as well as looking at what the competitors are doing with theirs.
Design phase focuses on API design and creation. In this phase API’s are created for developers from business assets and services ensuring the technology choices match overall business goals, the standardization of API libraries, as well as standardized error handling, and the creation of developer-friendly example code.
The Deployment phase focuses on how services are deployed and then undergoing continuous analysis and improvement through to end-of-life. This phase also includes complete back-end systems integration, testing and production deployment as well as performance optimization to assure that metrics are being met along the way.
