WHITEPAPER

product at the
modelling core
of IT transformation

Sponsored by:
 contents

3 Executive summary
4 CHAPTER 1 The reuse EUREKA moment
5 CHAPTER 2 BT’s use of TM Forum assets
7 CHAPTER 3 BT’s product modelling scheme
11 CHAPTER 4 Impact on BT’s architecture
13 CHAPTER 5 Progress and results so far
14 CHAPTER 6 Benefits to BT
16 CHAPTER 7 Next steps

2
 executive summary

Who? BT Group
What? As part of the SIMPLIFY program, the aim was to transform product modelling,
simplify the product portfolio, automate customer interactions, modernize IT systems, and move
customers from legacy products and services to many new ones, including those that leverage
BT’s new network combined with capabilities provided by ecosystem partners.

How? Using TM Forum assets to create a Product Modelling Scheme, including use of common
language across extensive teams, the Information Framework (SID), Open APIs to reduce the
integration effort and the Open Digital Architecture (ODA).

Results? Faster response to customers’ bid requests, reuse of building blocks to enable
rapid creation services and solutions instead of constant reinvention of the wheel,
improved customer experience and lower CapEx and OpEx.

After Philip Jansen took up the role of BT Group’s CEO in February 2019 one of his first objectives was
to radically simplify the business. A program was set up, called SIMPLIFY, which BT describes as one
of the largest and most ambitious business and IT transformations ever undertaken.

The desired outcome is for BT to become a more streamlined and efficient business, running Lean
and Agile business processes, and enabled by new digital capabilities, tools and techniques. SIMPLIFY
touches many parts of the business, including all the customer-facing units and many technology units.

The overarching objectives of BT’s IT transformation are increased agility, reduced time to market
for products and services, improved customer satisfaction and new-world experiences – and all at
less cost. This white paper focuses on the transformation of BT’s IT systems, and specifically a new
Product Modelling Scheme.

The infographic below is a summary of the pain points BT’s enterprise architecture team was striving
to overcome and the business outcomes it wants to achieve.

Pain points Business outcomes

Agility and accelerated time to market

Market agility through a simple, reusable CFSS lego set

Clear cost and organisational accountability

Fragmented configuration for the reusable components

Flexibility to quickly tailor products and

No product modelling tools propositions for contracts, retaining automation

Clear separation of concerns between

No reuse of service capability components of value IT

Consistent models regardless of who

Hard to resource
is doing them

This paper explores how the new approach to product modelling has the potential to be
a major contributor towards those IT goals, helping to:
simplify the product portfolio migrate users from legacy products
automate customer interactions and services to new innovative digitally
enabled ones.
modernize IT systems

3
 CHAPTER 1

the reuse EUREKA moment

After a series of discovery sessions around what the IT transformation should do and how, the
IT team leading the SIMPLIFY initiative had a Eureka moment. It grasped the potential of reusing
elements in product modelling as different customer-facing units (CFUs) were selling essentially the
same types of products to different sets of customers.

For example, the enterprise architecture team realized that the equipment product model it had
built for BT Global’s customer premises equipment (CPE) offer could also be used by BT’s Enterprise
division using the same building blocks, which it calls Leaf Product Specifications. It would just need
changes at the product offering level to accommodate different pricing and bundling.

Likewise BT realized it could re-use the same model and building blocks for unified communications
across different business units, with some granular modifications enabled by the Leaf Product
Specifications (see below).

BT recognized that for the re-use approach to succeed, it had to be very strict about what it classed
as a leaf product specification. A Leaf Product Specification was defined as any component that
has an impact on cost or price, or that can be selected by a customer. This introduced far greater
granularity than had ever been possible before.

The ownership and lifecycle of the Leaf Product Specifications needed to be carefully thought out
and managed. This avoids problems such as those created by bundling site connectivity and WAN
into a single product, then changes are needed to the WAN but not the connectivity.

Another example is that in the past, BT offered firewalls with a managed service wrapper around
them, which meant that product had to be dismantled and reassembled for customers who wanted
to manage the firewall themselves. The process is unwieldy, slow and time consuming.

4
 CHAPTER 2

BT’s use of TM Forum assets

BT’s IT transformation team was clear from the start that its strategic IT architecture should be
underpinned by TM Forum specifications, running on systems architected to leverage the Forum’s
information models. This would enable the exchange of information between systems through the
Forum’s Open APIs, and use concepts encapsulated in the Forum’s Open Digital Architecture (ODA).

BT is a founding member of TM Forum and has contributed many assets and ideas for other
members to share and evolve over many years. It used certain Forum standards and best practices to
guide the design and implementation of its Product Modelling Scheme to gain particular benefits:

Common language which is key because BT has thousands of people working on SIMPLIFY
– from architects, to designers, developers, business executives, process specialists and more
– so a common language spanning the whole program is important to ensure everyone has
the same understanding. A good example is that the word ‘service’ means different things in
different parts of the organization and in different contexts.

BT was keen to avoid wasting time and duplicating effort through a lack of clarity, and relied on
the Forum’s product/services/resources model, which is part of the Open Digital Architecture
(ODA) – see diagram of the catalog model below. However, the common language is used right
across all the TM Forum’s assets that BT employed for its Product Modelling Scheme.

The Information Framework (also known as SID) accelerated progress on the design and
development of the architectures compared with starting from scratch, so the team could
download a ready-to-use, proven billing account structure, say, as a starting point.
BT had previously used the Information Framework for scheme modelling. One of the biggest
differences this time was that the team recognized that a big benefit of the way the framework
is organized allows reuse of the different layers within the product model. This means products
can be launched and changed more quickly.

ODA - Global Catalogue Model to drive processes

Commercial Catalogue Describes only commercial Offer definitions can

characteristics (packaging, evolve without impact
Offer pricing rules, …) on technical
Product Catalogue
Manage Offer &

Specification
Order
Capture Rating
* Commerce
Management TTM is highly
Markets
*
Functional Catalogue

Doesn’t describe any reduced

Product commercial characteristics,
Specification only functional capabilities
Customer Order and characteristics
Orchestration &
Distribution
Derived from *1 Products are explicit and
Know-how directly correspond to
(CFS Specification) factories know-hows
Manage Technical Catalogue

Doesn’t describe any technical

Realized by
* characteristics, only functional
Service Order
Mgt
* capabilities and characteristics
Order Capture
and Order Delivery
Technical Catalogue

(SOM) Technical Solution

&
Resource
(RFS Specification)
Production are decoupled

Order Mgt *
Distributed on
(ROM) *
Resource Describes only technical
Technical solutions can
evolve without impact
Specification characteristics
on commercial level

No mapping or translation for delivery or billing, or channel related : better user experience © 2021 TM Forum

5
 BT also learned that it needs to be precise about how it constructs models and how they will sit
in its architecture: The framework model can be used, to some degree, to define the scope of
components within the architecture.

Organizing the product model this way – into procure, manufacture and manage – has drawn
much clearer boundaries between the product and service components.

BT found it needed to make little change to the Information Framework, which covered its
needs with perhaps the exception of assurance. The most important thing was recognizing that
BT had to create its own profile, setting the scope of which parts of the framework it would use
and how – see below.

Open API integration is easier, cheaper, faster and far more consistent using standards-based,
open APIs. The Forum’s APIs are not 100% plug and play because they are deliberately flexible
to allow interpretation to meet the different needs of a variety of CSPs. However, they made a
significant difference to the design and development approach, including how BT worked with
its vendors.

Historically BT has issued paper-based requests for proposals (RFPs) and invitations to tender
(ITTs), but for SIMFLIFY it invited vendors to integrate their products and solutions with those
of other vendors. This revealed that some apparently strong contenders didn’t work out so well
in practice, so sometimes a vendor that BT started working with on an aspect of SIMPLIFY was
swapped out two or three weeks later.

As the original, second or third choice vendor was exposing the same APIs as the initial choice,
BT was able to reuse much of the work it had done in the first two or three weeks.

The Open Digital Architecture is an evolving blueprint for modular, cloud-based, open
digital platforms that can be orchestrated using AI. The ultimate intention is to enable CSPs
and suppliers to invest in IT for new and differentiated services instead of maintenance and
integration. BT gained experience of using and developing the ODA through co-championing
2020 proof of concept Catalyst, The Aviator: Enabling multi-vertical innovation through 5G
slicing.

Big takeaways about using the Forum’s assets

The IT team soon realized that using TM Forum’s assets was not simply a case of sitting down with
Forum experts and creating a solution in a few days. BT had to invest time and effort in increasing its
understanding of the business requirements and TM Forum’s product specifications, which involved
several weeks’ close collaboration with Forum experts.

The enterprise architecture team also realized very quickly that designers and developers were
interpreting the TM Forum assets in different ways: The assets are deliberately flexible so that they
can be used to address issues in many different conditions and for various goals.

From this experience BT learned that it is critical for any organization that embarks on a radical
transformation program using TM Forum’s assets to develop a product modelling guide and a
solution guide for its technical teams. Simply introducing them to the Forum’s website and assets is
not enough.

Developing greater business understanding and figuring out how best to use the Forum’s assets was
an iterative process. The Product Modelling Scheme was developed over several weeks. As BT is such
a huge organization, the team also had to take a number of people with it on the journey, convincing
stakeholders and representatives from various teams – such as designers and developers – to adopt
this scheme. This was not quick nor easy, and proved a steep learning curve.

6
 CHAPTER 3

BT’s product
modelling scheme
In the summer of 2019, the enterprise architecture team began to create the Product Modelling
Scheme.

The first step

The first step was to define the rules for what constitutes a Leaf Product Specification, including the
level of granularity. Here it was decided that any component that had an impact on cost, price or was
customer selectable would be expressed as a Leaf Product Specification (L-PS)

BT/TM forum approach to product modelling

✔ Products, Configurations
✔ Pricing, Discounts “what we sell”
✔ Rules, SLAs
Product Offering (PO)
Commercial Products
0...
Commercial Components
Master Product ✔ Any level of
Specification (M-PS) composite entities
in between

✔ Configurations
0... ✔ Costing
✔ Rules, SLAs
Leaf Product
Specification (L-PS)

Service Components

or or
0...1 0...1 0...1
SKU
Supplier Supplier
Components
Supplier Product/Service Digital Customer Managed Service Customer
Specific
Framework Catalogue (SPS) Facing Service (CFS) Facing Service (MS-CFS)
Agreement

“what we procure” “what we make” “our service wrap”

The second step

Next, BT classified and mapped the Leaf Product Specifications to three types of functional building
blocks (see the service component level at the bottom of the diagram above):

Procure (supplier of product or service – red box),

Produce (the digital customer-facing service or solution manufactured from network and
compute-type resources, technical know-how and processes – dark blue box); and
Manage (managed service wrap created by people and processes – dark grey box).

This mapping is central to unlocking the value of the Product Modelling Scheme for the various
customer-facing units. For instance, the fulfillment of Leaf Product Specifications that are mapped to
supplier product/service (SPS) does not involve the BT production layer – there is a clear separation
between the Open Digital Architecture’s core commerce function and the production layer. Hence BT
can incorporate commercially available components where there is no advantage in manufacturing
such a service itself.

7
For other parts of its solution portfolio or in other customer-facing units, BT prides itself on its deep
manufacturing experience and expertise, such as for the network and traditional telco services, hence
the Leaf Product Specifications are mapped to produce for these kinds of offers.

A good example of this is Zoom, which BT Global could simply resell Zoom Meetings (Procure)
bundled with BT SIP Trunk Plan (Produce) and a managed service wrap (Manage) to bring extra
value to business customers. This was a first for BT Global – offering its customers popular third-party
software-as-a-service (SaaS) products bundled with its own digital and managed service offerings.

The example below applies the BT Product Modelling Scheme to show which Leaf Product
Specifications were needed to define the Zoom product offering.

Example: Zoom meetings

Transition & Onboard/Create Customer Sub Account on Zoom

Onboarding Service POST https://api.zoom.us/v2/accounts

Order/subscribe Base Plan or Bundle Licene/s on Zoom

Conferencing &
Base Plan: POST https://api.zoom.us/v2/accounts/%7Baccountid%7D/plans
Collaboration
Application Bundle: POST https://api.zoom.us/v2/accounts/(accountid)/plans/bundles
GET https://api.zoom.us/v2/accounts/%7Baccountid%7D/plans

Conferencing & Order/subscribe Add-ons (Webinar, Large Meeting, Rooms) License/s on Zoom
Collaboration
POST https://api.zoom.us/v2/accounts/%7Baccountid%7D/plans/addons
Application

Grouping
Media Recording Order/subscribe Add-ons (Recording) License/s on Zoom
Service POST https://api.zoom.us/v2/accounts/%7Baccountid%7D/plans/addons

Connector & Order/subscribe Add-ons (Recordingoom Connector, Meetings Connector) License/s on Zoom
Interface Service POST https://api.zoom.us/v2/accounts/%7Baccountid%7D/plans/addons

Audio Conference Order/subscribe Zoom Audio Plan (Plan Type, Tollfree Countries, Premium Countries, Callout Countries) on Zoom

Order/subscribe BT Audio Plan (Plan Type, Tollfree Countries, Premium Countries, Callout Countries) on Zoom
Audio Conference
POST https://api.zoom.us/v2/accounts/%7Baccountid%7D/plans

• Provision SIP Trunk Plan on Zoom

Configuration
• Configure SIP Trunk Numbers from BT Master Account to Customer Sub Account on Zoom
& Activation
• Enable SIP Trunk Configuration on Zoom
• Unassign Zoom Toll Country Numbers on Zoom
• Enable China Data Centre on Zoom
• Enable SIP Trunk Numbers on Zoom

Note that before the Product Modelling Scheme, managed services were not recognized in BT legacy
systems as separate components, but they have now been pulled out of and detached from what
BT calls its digital or manufactured resources as highlighted in the managed firewall example in a
previous section.

The third step

The next step was to define the systems responsible for fulfillment of the three types of Leaf Product
Specifications. The following responsibilities were agreed:
1. Supplier product/service – core commerce (Vlocity, now part of Salesforce)
2. Digital customer-facing services – production (Ciena Blueplanet)
3. Managed Service customer-facing services – service management ( ServiceNow).

8
The fourth step
The final step in setting up the Product Modelling Scheme was to create a catalog of these Leaf
Product Specifications. BT refers to this catalog or library as its own version of the periodic table. The
team defined the main categories for this catalog as:

Location services (physical and virtual)

Equipment location services (physical and virtual)
Host overlay network connectivity service
Overlay network service – identifier service
Cloud and hosting (public, private and hybrid)
Overlay cloud application service
Security, threat and fraud control
OTT auxiliary service
Managed service.

Once a service has had a leaf assigned, it can be combined with others, enabling certain customer-
facing units to build products and structure complex solutions that match more exactly what
customers want, rather than BT offering its closest fit. Importantly, this approach also drives
consistency in the way services and products are created.

The product model incorporates information about the workflows behind the Leaf Product
Specification, but the specification itself remains agnostic of any product it is included to avoid
becoming product specific. This is a key aspect of the separated layers within TM Forum’s offer/
product/service/resource model – see Open Digital Architecture in the section on BT’s use of TM
Forum assets.

Instead, they must be entirely API and purpose-driven, unaware of their surroundings. They receive
the information they need to function from the product context. The BT enterprise architecture team
feels it has developed a much clearer understanding of these principles and how to deploy them than
at any previous time.

Another key consideration concerning the Product Modelling Scheme is that its periodic table
or library should contain a finite number of reusable services. BT reckons there are about 200
reusable services that are necessary to a communications service provider (CSP) and determined
to draw up and define a finite list instead of adding more services, especially when introducing a
third-party component.

9
 implications for BT IT architecture - the reusable Leaf-PS library
Finite, complete, supplier independent

For example, no matter how many brands of virtual meeting applications BT offers in future, they
should be encapsulated in a single virtual meeting definition, regardless of the vendor. TM Forum has
recognized that its Open APIs need to encapsulate polymorphic pattern matching and abstraction of
services to provide vendor-agnostic definitions of services, and work began on this aspect in 2019, as
part of the APIs team’s work on a NaaS [network as a service] Component suite.

In other words, the services are independent of their original supplier. This can be achieved by
translation in the integration layer to each supplier’s APIs, which can be complex as orchestration might
be involved too.

BT also realized that the Leaf Product Specifications had to have clear ownership and its lifecycle
carefuly managed. Some members of BT’s product management teams became service managers,
tasked with ensuring services were reusable in many different products.

Particular Leaf Product Specifications can be assigned to particular parts of the organization, so
the performance of the team responsible for broadband, for example, can be measured regarding
reuse level, looking at the costs and other key performance indicators (KPIs). This brings clear
accountability and transparency which were not possible previously when so many elements were
inextricably bound together.

Achieving the right level of granularity is key to being able to construct multiple products together
very quickly.

10
 CHAPTER 4

impact on BT’s architecture

The enterprise architecture team in BT has created the target systems architecture and populated
it with potential vendors’ products. The schematic below shows how the new approach to product
modelling drives the functionality aspects of various components in BT’s architecture, including:
Configure, price, quote (CPQ); customer order management (COM); service oriented management
(SOM); IT service management (ITSM); IT operations management (ITOM); and billing.

target value learn buy get use pay support

architecture sales agent/ other
summary account
manager
SNOW app customer
SNOW
customer
IT
customer facing
service teams
customer

authentication pre-sales sales experience (CPQ) sales experience

API & exposure Layer

marketing
manager
marketing CRM data services

lead management product customer billing & revenue

catalogue inventory management
sales agent/ contract
CPQ visualisation
account management product
manager manager
technical
order mgt support
(product orchestration) teams

technical
integration product
manager
digital
service
digital
service
service desk

TMF via Apigee+ number network catalogue inventory managed service catalogue
Kafka+BT svcs management verification inventory orchestration
digital digital
service service
service assurance fed with real-time events
TMF via BT svcs design orchestration from master data sources
via Kafka bus
IP address resource resource
management discovery orchestration
vendor via Apigee security health and master data
+Kafka+BT svcs monitoring performance management
monitoring
field force
vendor plugin
management
API layer to network and service partners/suppliers
GUI/web
direct control of devices BT networks and services other suppliers’ networks and
core network services (including legacy NetCo)
service team

To manage the product definition within BT’s IT architecture (see diagram below), the configure
price quote (CPQ) is provided by Vlocity (a Salesforce company). The digital manufacturing engine
is provided by Blue Planet (a division of Ciena) which is responsible for setting up circuits and
controlling electronics, among other things. Then the service-wrap that BT provides around some
products it sells is handled by ServiceNow.

11
 Implications for BT IT architecture - product definition management

CPQ & Order

Management

Product Offering Specifications Product

Master Product Specifications
Leaf Product Specifications
& Service
Catalogue

Supplier (TMF 633) Digital Customer Facing (TMF 633) Managed Service
Product/Service Service Specifications Customer Facing
Specifications Service Specifications

Supplier Order Supplier & Service

Management Resource Management
Order
Fulfilment

Product Service Managed

& Service & Resource Service
Catalog Catalog Catalog

Getting the data model and structure right is essential to automation and the customer-facing
service solutions will encapsulate workflows to manage them in different scenarios, such as provision,
modification and assurance.

This exercise also had the benefit of bringing greater clarity about the capabilities within the
organization, and what can be offered to internal as well as external customers to gain greater
organizational synergy and efficiency.

BT notes that some suppliers it wanted to use do not support the Forum’s Open APIs, but where the
operator still wanted to use the company’s capabilities, it could wrap them in its own translation of
the Forum’s APIs. This meant the overall exchange model between all the components conforms with
TM Forum’s suite of APIs to enable a consistent data model.

The diagram below illustrates the implication of Product Modelling Scheme on ordering and inventory
as well as the TM Forum’s APIs deployed within its IT architecture to facilitate these functions.

Implications for BT IT architecture - ordering and inventory

CPQ & Order

Management
Product Inventory
Asset (TMF 637)
Installed
Base

TMF622 via Managed

B2B Gateway Service Orders
Supplier (TMF 641)
Product/Service Digital Service
Orders (B2B) Orders (TMF 641)

Supplier Order Supplier & Service

Management Resource Order Management
Fulfilment
Service Inventory
(TMF 638)

Digital Service Digital Unified

Service Managed Service Inventory
Inventory Master
Inventory Master (CMDB)
Inventory

Discovery Discovery

The first squads were invited December 2019 to start co-located development work, face-to-face
on this architecture. BT gained a good grounding in this approach from another proof of concept
Catalyst project it co-championed in 2020, The EDGE in automation.

12
 CHAPTER 5

progress and results so far

So far BT has applied its Product Modelling Scheme to new rather than established projects. The
team began with Leaf Product Specifications for equipment-type services, host overlay network
connectivity services, overlay network connectivity, cloud and hosting services for BT Global as the
lead customer-facing unit (CFU) .

They now include technical services (which BT refers to as digital services), managed services,
advisory and consultancy services, business and product analysis, project management, data
management and more.

In May 2020, BT Consumer and BT Enterprise customer-facing units started work on volume
products like broadband and mobile. As discussed, BT Global, for instance, chose a concept it called
DigiCo to incorporate commercial OTT components into its services (see Zoom Meetings), while other
units were concerned with developing more solutions offered from BTs core infrastructure.

Teams and guardrails

The various teams are structured along the lines of the Agile/Spotify model, comprising tribes, squads
and chapters. The leaders of the Project Modelling Scheme developed common component cards,
and specific squads were assigned to certain products, such as for broadband.

For many BT employees, this Agile way of working was new, featuring two-week sprints, again
this was a steep learning curve in itself. The enterprise architects oversee the entire scheme and
are heavily involved in the projects, but they have produced guardrails so that other teams are
empowered to progress their projects without constant reference to the enterprise architects. The
importance of staying within the guardrails cannot be overstated, however, as deviation dilutes the
potential of reuse.

Three kinds of product trials

BT started by trialing three types of products – CPE, unified communications and managed services.
It has piloted several different types of products within these three categories, improved and agreed
them. Now work is in progress with new business requirements, driving extensions and optimizations,
and deploying the scheme in other customer-facing units across BT.

The enterprise architecture team is still having to work hard to sell the scheme internally and
encourage adoption. To help the scheme gain that traction, the team is training various parts of BT on
product modelling using the scheme, implementing different types of products and using feedback to
refine the scheme.

13
 CHAPTER 6

benefits to BT

Already the Product Modelling Scheme is delivering some of the required outcomes, and the
enterprise architecture team is confident it will deliver more. The team is training people in various
parts of the company to use the scheme and receiving valuable feedback from the teams that are
implementing it, so the scheme can be constantly refined and improved.

Business side engagement

It is most encouraging that the business side of BT has engaged in the product modelling, having
previously shown little interest in pilot modelling of products. Now they are not only interested, but
actively engaged in product modelling – product owners are working on product models rather than
operating through several layers of proxy.

This is because they realised the benefits of having a structured and modular approach, and the power
that comes with it. Also, the tooling of modern architectures is far more amenable to the lay person
and so it is easier for them to participate. It is noticeable that they have even adopted the language,
talking for instance about how many customer-facing solutions and services (CFSs) are in a release.

Faster response to customers

Another upside is being able to respond to customers’ request for bids far more quickly, which for BT
Global often has to be tailored, and could involve assuming responsibility for third-party equipment as
part of the solution. Previously BT had to rely on spreadsheets and Word documents, which was slow
and error-prone.

More automation
Also customers’ solutions will be far more automated, avoiding re-keying and other manual activities
to get them up and running and support them. So putting together a customized solution reusing
standard building blocks and processes is the key.

Customers can order what they want

From the customers’ point of view, they will be able to order exactly what they want and at the same
time, the Product Modelling Scheme makes it simpler for BT to describe how it could manage the
solution, which might include assuming responsibility for some third-party products owned by the client.

Encouraging reuse through governance

The enterprise architecture team is in the process of setting up governance, which is critical for
effective reuse. For resuse to deliver the full benefits, it needs to be done whenever and wherever it is
an option. The governance is in the form of an approval process and a product modelling Guild which
designers and developers can join then present their product models and seek advice from others
with experience.

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Easy to use
BT has found it is essential to create an easily digestible guide for solution design because using TM
Forum’s assets is not as simple as just pointing designers to the Forum’s website and assets, which
are vast and encapsulate many choices so that they are relevant to many different kinds of businesses
whose problems vary. So an organization must create a profile for its own use, which states clearly
exactly how it will use the TM Forum assets, including restrictions.

Standard approach
Creating a standard way of modelling products, services and resources is critical if you want to be
Agile and reuse all those things to speed up operations and getting new services to customers, at
less cost. The creation of the Leaf Product Specifications simplifies the role of each layer, such as
when BT’s production layer needs to be involved and when it does not, for instance when including
commercial OTT components in a product or service.

Unprecedented granularity
The team has confirmed it can easily manage creating different offerings to customer-facing
units due to the granularity of the leaf specifications but using the same building blocks. This has
significantly reduced time to market and increased speed, gaining considerable and clear benefits in
terms of the integration.

15
 CHAPTER 7

next steps

As outlined in the previous section, BT has addressed a number of issues carrying out this work it is
feeding back into the Forum’s Open Digital Architecture project and into the Open APIs suite. This
will enble other Forum members to benefit from its experience and knowledge.

Where some APIs are mature – such as those concerned with ordering where it is obvious that a lot
of thought has gone into them – almost 80% could be used straight out of the box. BT added some
small, specific attributes.

Others, such as TMF701, are less mature, so BT must decide whether to customize it for BT’s own use
and feed it back into the Forum or take another route.

The APIs around sales – for product ordering, product qualification, service provisioning, and service
catalog – have been used extensively. Although BT is yet to implement the product catalog API,
it intends to use it for transferring data. Note that BT has no ambitions to run a single centralized
catalog, but to ensure fast, smooth interoperability between them.

BT also intends to make the customer-facing services and solutions definitions from Blue Planet and
ServiceNow available to the Vlocity catalog to build products on top. This has not been an out-of-the-
box endeavor, as ServiceNow’s product structure is defined in the schema of the ITIL Configuration
Management Database (CMDB).

BT will continue to train various parts of the organization on product modelling using the scheme.
Developing lots of products requires many product modellers who all have to be trained to do things
in the same way and have the same mindset and approach to achieve the reusability. That ramp-up
has taken a little time to gain traction but is now gathering momentum.

There are three more products in the launch pipeline, including another virtual conferencing offer
based on a commercially available offer, one for CPE and an enterprise smart connectivity offer.

BT’s intention over the next five years is to reinvent its IT and develop a whole new stack based
around ODA principles so it is developing a roadmap for products, using this new back-end
ecosystem, which eventually will lead to the closure of many existing products.

Product lifecycle management and product withdrawal have not so far been a priority for BT, but it
expects they will be in the future, although by definition, the more modular approach of the Product
Modelling Scheme makes lifecycle management easier. Customer-facing services and solutions could
facilitate the retirement of products too because it is easy to see what its impact is on products and
vice versa, which is difficult in BT’s older product modelling.

16
 For more information please contact George Glass
wgglass@tmforum.org

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