Overview

This project is part of FIWARE and has been made in collaboration with the TM Forum.

The Business API Ecosystem is a joint component made up of the FIWARE Business Framework and a set of APIs (and its reference implementations) provided by the TMForum. This component allows the monetization of different kind of assets (both digital and physical) during the whole service life cycle, from offering creation to its charging, accounting and revenue settlement and sharing. The Business API Ecosystem exposes its complete functionality through TMForum standard APIs; concretely, it includes the catalog management, ordering management, inventory management, usage management, billing, customer, and party APIs.

The Business API Ecosystem is not a single software repository, but it is composed of different projects which work coordinatelly to provide the complete functionality.

Concretely, the Business API Ecosystem is made of the following components:

  • Reference implementations of TM Forum APIs: Reference implementation of the catalog management, ordering management, inventory management, usage management, billing, customer, and party APIs.
  • Business Ecosystem Charging Backend: Is the component in charge of processing the different pricing models, the accounting information, and the revenue sharing reports. With this information, the Business Ecosystem Charging Backend is able to calculate amounts to be charged, charge customers, and pay sellers.
  • Business Ecosystem RSS: Is in charge of distributing the revenues originated by the usage of a given service among the involved stakeholders. In particular, it focuses on distributing part of the revenue generated by a service between the Business API Ecosystem instance provider and the Service Provider(s) responsible for the service. With the term “service” we refer to both final applications and backend application services (typically exposed through an API). Note that, in the case of composite services, more than one service provider may have to receive a share of the revenues.
  • Business Ecosystem Logic Proxy: Acts as the endpoint for accessing the Business API Ecosystem. On the one hand, it orchestrates the APIs validating user requests, including authentication, authorization, and the content of the request from a business logic point of view. On the other hand, it serves a web portal that can be used to interact with the system.