Telco Enters the Composable IT Era At DTW Ignite: Industry Momentum Behind ODA Components and ODA Canvas Delivering Real-World AI-Enabled Growth

TM Forum announced the launch of ODA Component Certification, a key milestone in the Forum’s industry mission to achieve truly plug-and-play, composable IT and ecosystems. Developed and validated by TM Forum Members, the certification program provides a trusted industry shorthand for ODA component conformance – cutting complexity, reducing risk, and accelerating innovation.

 

With ODA Components as certified building blocks that slot into a common cloud-native blueprint, CSPs can deliver standardised behaviours and interfaces, cutting deployment cycles, reducing cost, and unlocking a truly composable ecosystem where solutions scale at the speed the market now demands.

 

The program builds on the growing momentum behind the ODA Canvas, TM Forum’s runtime execution environment for integrating and deploying ODA Components at scale on cloud platforms. With the combined power of certified ODA Components and the ODA Canvas, TM Forum members are advancing the industry’s transformation towards an AI-ready, composable, plug-and-play future.

 

Since announcing the development at DTW Ignite 2024, a working group of Members including Altice Labs, Cerillion, Ericsson, Hansen, Jio, Marand and Xacria, have collaborated on the ODA Component Conformance Certification program completing 15 successful certifications. This work builds on TM Forum’s successful Open API conformance certification program, with 100 companies now having completed certification for over 1,700 Open API deployments, including more than 20 CSPs and their software suppliers.

The ODA Canvas represents a significant step forward for the telco industry. It provides a standardised, cloud-native runtime environment that simplifies the integration and management of ODA components across complex IT landscapes, while also acting as a test environment for conformance certification.

The active involvement of AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft in launching managed, ODA-compliant canvases marks a critical step in accelerating industry-wide adoption. From Innovation Hub to live production, TM Forum Member collaboration has delivered a full open source reference Canvas, with real-world implementations delivering impact today, these include:

 Nik Willetts, CEO, TM Forum: “Our industry is at a tipping point. In an AI-first market, year-long integrations and proprietary roadblocks can’t survive. With the launch of ODA Component Certification and momentum behind the ODA Reference Canvas, CSPs and vendors can launch services in weeks, slash integration costs, and elevate customer experience. This is real impact – faster innovation, leaner operations, sharper agility. Industry momentum around ODA is accelerating, fuelled by real business outcomes and the role of ODA in simplifying adoption of AI at scale.”

 

Christos Sotiriou, Principal Architect, Information Technology, Vodafone Greece: “The business case for ODA is proven. Our CELL Canvas eliminates manual release work, and automates critical infrastructure tasks like API exposure, security, and observability, so a task that took two weeks now completes in seconds. That agility lets us scale our micro-services clusters effortlessly and focus resources on innovation, rather than integration.”

 

Sigrid Braun, Enterprise IT Architect Deutsche Telekom: “Our Magenta Canvas provides a secure, scalable, and modular foundation to deploy ODA compliant components across multiple cloud environments – saving time and reducing complexity. By integrating it with our Open Telekom Integration Platform, we speed up delivery, and free developers to focus on building business features.”

 

Brian Cappellani, CTO, Communications and Media, Hansen: “We’re proud to be actively contributing to the ODA initiative and to lead the ODA Conformance workstream, which is critical to aligning our industry around common standards. For Hansen, collaboration with CSPs and ecosystem partners is essential to unlocking faster innovation, streamlined service delivery, and greater commercial agility. ODA is helping the industry move beyond integration complexity and toward a future of composable, cloud-native solutions.”

 

Ahead of DTW Ignite it was announced that Verizon Consumer Group had become the 18th global CSP to achieve TM Forum’s ‘Running on ODA’ accreditation joining AT&T, Axiata, BT Group, CityFibre, Deutsche Telekom, Entel Group, Jio, NTT Group, Orange, SES Astra, stc, Telefonica Germany, Telefonica Group, Telia, Telstra, TELUS, and Vodafone – with many more organizations implementing the architecture. It is estimated that more than two billion subscribers globally are now supported by networks utilising ODA.

 

Similarly, 18 companies are now accredited as offering ‘Ready for ODA’ products, with Xacria, Zira and ZTE being the most recent organizations to have achieved this. To date, almost 100 companies have certified well over 1,500 APIs in commercial software products and real-world implementations as conformant to the TM Forum Open API standards. A joint certification program with GSMA has also been announced enabling CSPs to certify all their Open Gateway APIs together, including CAMARA’s Service APIs and TM Forum’s Operate APIs.  

Source: TM Forum media announcement