Global pandemic provides impetus for faster digital transformation

The world is scurrying towards digitisation, and this race is now even more prevalent with the COVID-19 pandemic that is a major disruptive force. The technology world is opening up internationally and companies that can seamlessly transform their IT operations and integrate older tech with innovations, are going to reap the rewards. Globetom’s CEO, Philip Stander (pictured below) was the presenter on a recent Webinar hosted by the TM Forum, a non-profit, member-driven standards organisation for the Telecommunications and Digital Service Provider markets. Stander says his company helps its telco customers to successfully implement TMForum Open APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to accelerate standardisation internally and digital services ecosystem integration to expand digital offering reach. Stander says that Globetom’s investment in contributing to these APIs over the past three or four years is now starting to pay off.

 

 

Likening the adoption of APIs to resistance initially experienced with Linux adoption in mission-critical environments, Stander said that although there was a lot of activity at the lower level of API adoption, there are few mature adopters at this stage. Those listening in to the compelling 40-minute presentation will have little doubt as to the power that a standards-based API strategy offers, especially in terms of the scale and agility it unlocks.

 

 

“Globetom has built a unique proposition to accelerate Digital Transformation that focuses on standard open APIs and layering of these APIs and ecosystem integration at scale with our Integration Platform as a Service offering”, said Stander. He cited a recent assignment where Globetom had been able to assist an e-commerce payment solution provider in the Middle East in adding shipment tracking to its mobile payment platform by leveraging readily available standard APIs from the TM Forum. “With a combination of Globetom platforms and the TM Forum Open APIs this enablement can be achieved in a matter of weeks with low- to no traditional software engineering involved,” he added.

 

 

Although Globetom has done a lot of work with telco customers, leveraging Open APIs is applicable across industry verticals. Any business embarking on a Digital Transformation journey can leverage Open APIs and associated data stores and processes that represent international standards. These APIs enable faster, and lower cost, digital transformation at scale. Sharing candidly about what new thinking by Globetom has produced, Stander outlined how the layering of APIs would help organisations to position different APIs into context for digital integrators at the experience, process and systems layers for usability, differentiation and sustainability. Layering is pivotal in an API-led Digital Transformation strategy and in achieving speed to market and business agility with associated cost efficiencies. “This layering will help those companies whose initial reaction is that the TM Forum Open APIs, at face value, appear too complicated and don’t know where to start,” he said.

 

 

Continued overleaf

Asked about the benefits of adopting Open APIs, Stander mentioned that Open APIs as a digital integration gateway, coupled with an underpinning integration platform capability, constitute an efficient “Digital Integration Hub”. One of the derivative benefits of a Digital Integration Hub is that a System Layer of APIs constructed to overlay legacy Systems of Record, coupled with Process Layer APIs to leverage the legacy system asset base in organisations, helps to increase the lifespan of these Systems of Record. As most companies are reluctant to decommission legacy Systems of Record, Stander said Globetom had successfully migrated older and typically proprietary data models to an API framework canonical data model.

 

 

The webinar is available from the TM Form web site at
https://inform.tmforum.org/webinars/bringing-open-apis-to-life-at-scale.

 

 

 

 

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About Globetom

 

Globetom provides global companies with agility and speed to market at scale by developing highly engineered cloud-ready technology which leverages APIs and related process capital, resulting in bespoke solutions for real-time integration.

 

Globetom was established in 2002 in South Africa and has since developed specialised solutions in the aviation and telecommunication sector globally. Globetom has a presence in the following markets: USA, New Zealand, UK, Zambia, Lesotho, Japan, Canada, UAE and South Africa.