Amartus nBrace 2.0: Rapid partnering and on-demand negotiation of inter-provider ICT services

Amartus announced general availability of its nBrace 2.0 inter-provider service automation software solution for communications service providers.

The solution enables rapid partnering and on-demand negotiation of inter-provider information and communication technology (ICT) services in near/real-time, offering service providers immediate access to a global ecosystem of automated partner providers using the latest industry standards.

Today’s lengthy, ad-hoc, non-standard inter-provider service negotiation is incompatible with the needs of enterprise customers. Now, more than ever, they need to provide seamless access to their globally distributed workforces and digital resources.

Service providers and vendors have joined forces to develop industry standards for automation to address their needs. nBrace is a product of this work.

“No single provider can offer the global, on-demand ICT services an enterprise needs, they must partner with others. nBrace, through its support of the MEF LSO Sonata inter-provider standard, gives service providers the means to quickly and efficiently participate in a global ecosystem to offer these services,” said Michael Kearns, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Amartus.

“A pre-built solution that’s easy for service providers to deploy and adapt is a must in order to quickly expand the ecosystem and achieve global coverage. We are excited to offer such a solution to drive this expansion.”

“More than 50 service providers worldwide are at various stages of evaluation, demonstration, and production readiness of LSO Sonata APIs to enable frictionless inter-provider commerce,” said Nan Chen, President, MEF.

“MEF welcomes the introduction of advanced software tools and solutions from companies like Amartus aimed at accelerating LSO Sonata adoption for automated business-to-business interactions. Such tools are key to rapidly expanding the ecosystem and making inter-provider automation APIs accessible for all providers.”

nBrace is initially targeted at network providers to address their lack of automated on-demand negotiation for inter-provider connectivity, a critical underlay required to achieve truly global SD-WAN and multi-cloud ICT services.

nBrace has an open, programmable, service- and technology-agnostic design that means it can easily support more complex inter-provider services incorporating cloud and applications as well as emerging technologies and services such as 5G network slicing, edge cloud, and industry vertical services.

It implements the latest MEF LSO Sonata and TM Forum industry standards for inter- and intra-provider services automation and is extensible to support emerging standards such as CBAN inter-provider settlement. Amartus is a member of MEF and TM Forum, and is a part of the CBAN.

nBrace is designed to accelerate service providers’ adoption of the latest MEF LSO Sonata inter-provider service automation standard, providing an efficient, cost-effective means to join the global inter-provider supply chain. It supports an integrated deployment option for providers who want to augment their existing B-OSS to add LSO Sonata support.

It also supports a rapid deployment option for providers without a suitable B-OSS who want to join the ecosystem quickly with the option of later adding a step-by-step B-OSS, if and when needed. nBrace can be deployed in both public and private clouds.

Amartus is actively working with several providers to support their LSO Sonata implementation based on nBrace 2.0, including interoperability trials, and expects it to be in production networks by the second half of 2020.

nBrace was first announced at MEF 2019, when it was used by two leading tier 1 international wholesale network providers in an award-winning PoC that demonstrated combined use of MEF LSO Sonata and blockchain to automate inter-carrier connectivity negotiation and settlement.

Early work on nBrace featured in the award-winning Skynet TM Forum Catalyst at Digital Transformation World 2019 and the MEF 2018 Fulfillment & Activation PoC.

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