LSO Payload Factory

Simplifying the Buying and Selling of Digital Products

There is a growing awareness in the telecom industry that agreement is essential on product models so that products can be transacted automatically and consistently between buyers and sellers throughout the entire supply chain.

The LSO Payload Factory program enables the industry to quickly generate consensus on product data schemas that can be used with LSO APIs to eliminate market fragmentation and wasted resources.

In The Spotlight

Why Business Automation Depends on LSO Product Payloads

How will Mplify’s new LSO Product Modelers group accelerate the availability and relevance of LSO Product Payloads?

Today, each supplier attempts to provide machine-language descriptions (otherwise known as “product data schema”), often embedded inside APIs (Application Programmable Interfaces), which they use to interface between their system and those of their customers. However, lack of consistency results in unnecessary business friction between buyers and sellers who devote valuable resources to maintaining proprietary business interfaces with each existing or potential partner.

The very important first step to eliminating this business friction was achieved when Mplify started making available many open standard LSO (Lifecycle Service Orchestration) APIs, which are now being implemented by an increasing number of global service providers and solution providers.

An important design feature of LSO APIs is that they can, without being altered in any way, be used together with suitably designed product schemas to handle business for a limitless range of products.

Secondly, Mplify has created a library of open source, standardized product models in the form of data schema that can be “blended” on demand with the following LSO APIs—POQ, Quote, Product Offering Availability Discovery, Pricing Discovery, Product Order, and Product Inventory—and makes the new data schema available on the LSO Marketplace.

How the LSO Payload Factory Works

The Mplify membership identifies a product that is a candidate for a standardized product model.
For that product, one or more members contribute to the consensus-building process with a data schema currently in use.
Mplify facilitates the review of that data schema by other interested member companies and aggregates the comments and proposed additions through several cycles of review until the version of the data schema is considered stable.
Mplify verifies that the data schema can be blended with the following LSO APIs—POQ, Quote, Product Offering Availability Discovery, Pricing Discovery, Product Order, and Product Inventory—and makes the new data schema available on the LSO Marketplace.
Mplify facilitates the start of the formal standardization of the product requirements and use cases for that product, followed by the formal standardization of the product payload and the developer guide.

Example

Through a survey, Mplify determines that there is demand for a standardized product model and data schema for “Photonic Wavelength” services that haven’t previously been standardized at the service level in Mplify.

One of the members contributes their data schema for a photonic wavelength offering that is currently sold to their partners. Mplify then introduces it to other members through the Accelerator Black Hail.

After several iterations of review and proposed changes by other members in the Accelerator Black Hail, a new version of the photonic wavelength service product data schema is then made available on the LSO Marketplace website, which can be blended with the LSO APIs.

A standardization process is then initiated in Mplify, resulting in two new Mplify standards: Product Requirements and Use Cases for Photonic Wavelength Services and then the Product Payload and Developer Guide for Photonic Wavelength Services.

What Can I Achieve with the LSO Payload Factory?

The LSO Payload Factory is a unique framework in which to rapidly prototype product data models and get feedback from industry peers, resulting in your product model forming the basis of a more widely adopted pre-standard product data schema.