Netcracker API Management
& Integration

Maximize API value across a dynamic ecosystem

Netcracker API Management & Integration facilitates a thriving ecosystem of partners, developers and customers delivering secure, easy-to-consume APIs with automated connections between networks, services and applications.

Unifying API Management and Integration

The telecom industry is transforming all aspects of its business, driven by the demand for better customer experience, increased efficiency and new ways to monetize network assets. APIs have become critical enablers of this change, allowing service providers to expose network and IT capabilities (like location, quality of service or billing) to a broad ecosystem of internal teams and external partners, customers and developers in a standardized, scalable manner.

Netcracker has always been a strong supporter of Open APIs and methods to simplify integrations and automate processes. Our solutions are built on widely supported standards from TM Forum, MEF, 3GPP, O-RAN Alliance, CAMARA and others, ensuring compatibility across diverse systems.

However, as ecosystems expand and the number and types of APIs grow, creating and managing them efficiently is essential to avoid complexity, guarantee security and maximize their value across the business.

Netcracker API Management and Integration unifies all aspects of managing any type of API in any environment, providing seamless integration across the entire ecosystem. From API design to deployment, management and monetization, our solution ensures that every step is automated, secure and optimized for performance.

Key functions include:

API Exposure Platform: Provides a single frontend for CSPs, partners and developers where stakeholders can discover, subscribe to and interact with APIs, fostering collaboration and ecosystem development.
Open Knowledge Base: A centralized hub for all API and integration assets, including an extensive API library, API discovery and version control.
Design Studio: Empowers users to design, build and modify APIs and integrations quickly, without requiring extensive coding knowledge.
API Lifecycle Management Engine: Manages an API’s journey from design and development to deployment, monitoring, versioning and eventually retirement.
API Gateway: Secures and optimizes API interactions, enabling seamless integration between external systems and back-end services.
Advanced Integration Layer: seamlessly connects on-premise, cloud-based and legacy systems, enabling CSPs to unify fragmented applications and processes.

As the business grows, Netcracker API Management and Integration enables seamless scaling without compromising the user experience. Whether CSPs are adding new integrations, expanding to new markets or accommodating increased traffic, our solution ensures a consistent and smooth experience for all users across the entire lifecycle.

Netcracker API Management and Integration is fully adaptable and can be seamlessly deployed in any environment—on-premises, SaaS, cloud or hybrid — providing maximum flexibility to meet unique infrastructure needs and support multiple tenants within a single solution. This flexibility ensures that CSPs can scale efficiently and securely, regardless of their deployment.

Centralized Hub for All API and Integration Assets

With the growing number of APIs, effective management is crucial for storing and maintaining up-to-date API standards and documentation, as well as avoiding version tracking complexities and fragmented workflows. Our Open Knowledge Base overcomes these issues by centralizing the management of API documentation, integration assets and tools.

With an extensive API library, supporting REST, SOAP, gRPC, GraphQL, AsyncAPI, RESTCONF, NETCONF/YANG and full TOSCA formats, it simplifies system integration and enhances operational efficiency. Features like advanced API discovery (including open and client-specific access), an API registry with version control and backward compatibility checks streamline API management. Pre-integration with BSS/OSS ensures compatibility with existing CSP infrastructures.

This centralized approach helps CSPs govern APIs efficiently, integrate seamlessly with current systems and adapt more quickly to evolving technologies.

Netcracker’s strong alignment with industry standardization organizations such as TM Forum, MEF, ETSI, 3GPP, CAMARA and ORAN speeds up integration and facilitates consistent and secure interactions across diverse ecosystems. With certifications including the TM Forum Platinum Badge for Open API and ODA Compliance at Ready for ODA Level 6, CSPs can trust they are leveraging a solution that is both robust and aligned with the highest industry standards, providing a scalable foundation for future growth and success.

Rapidly Create and Modify APIs With Ease

Our Design Studio simplifies the design, building and modification of APIs and integrations without requiring coding expertise. It incorporates no-code/low-code, AI-driven design builder tools for collaborative API development and testing, alongside pre-built connectors and enterprise integration patterns. These tools significantly simplify the creation of APIs and integration flows. Everything is pre-integrated with Netcracker BSS/OSS components.

Users can test APIs, transform payloads and ensure consistency with enforced style guides and standards compliancy. The intuitive drag-and-drop interface, incorporating templates and a GenAI assistant, provides design recommendations and automatically adapts APIs based on changing requirements. This helps to enhance API reusability and accelerate integration design.

With features such as version control, backward compatibility and rollback, version masquerading and seamless CI/CD integration, API updates and rapid iterations can be incorporated without disrupting existing workflows. Our ability to combine multiple APIs into complex workflows enhances flexibility, making it easier to deliver sophisticated solutions at speed.

Maximize Efficiency With Automated API Lifecycle Management

API Lifecycle Management ensures that the entire CSP API ecosystem remains consistent, secure and compliant by managing every aspect of the API journey—from planning and designing to testing, versioning, deployment, monitoring and retirement.

Onboarding for developers and integration teams is simplified with centralized access to APIs, connectors, templates and enterprise integration patterns serving as the single source of truth for integration assets. With the power of GenAI, no-code/low-code features, automatic version control and up-to-date documentation, CSPs can readily access accurate information, gaining complete visibility and control over APIs and integrations throughout their lifecycle. Automated testing and validation ensure that APIs meet functional and performance standards before deployment, reducing errors and enhancing reliability, with every API designed to meet CSPs’ operational needs.

API Lifecycle Management tracks the entire deprecation and removal process for outdated APIs, ensuring a seamless transition and minimizing disruption of the integration flows. It integrates smoothly with CI/CD pipelines, enabling continuous, downtime-free updates and rollbacks. Advanced security features and prompt patching protect APIs from vulnerabilities, while dynamic scaling and load balancing ensure optimal performance, even during peak traffic.

With robust monitoring and analytics, API Lifecycle Management provides real-time insights into API performance, usage patterns and health. This allows CSPs to track the effectiveness of their integrations, optimize performance and ensure smooth operations across all APIs. Detailed analytics on API consumption and performance also enable CSPs to fine-tune their monetization strategies, optimizing revenue streams and unlocking new business opportunities.

Advanced Integration Layer unifies integration flows across diverse environments, connecting a mixture of processes, services, applications and data in hybrid settings that span cloud-based platforms, on-premises systems and legacy networks. With advanced tools for integration flow development, execution and governance, as well as prebuilt adapters and API Lifecycle Management, it bridges fragmented systems, supports legacy systems and automates processes across varied platforms and vendors, simplifying connectivity.

By coordinating all these processes, API Lifecycle Management optimizes API security, performance and scalability, ensuring that APIs remain aligned with business objectives throughout their entire lifecycle.

Protected Data and Operations With a Zero Trust Security Model

Netcracker API Management and Integration is built with comprehensive security at its core, leveraging cutting-edge technologies to safeguard CSP environments. By employing a Zero Trust security model, Netcracker ensures that every request is authenticated and authorized, with no assumptions made about trust, regardless of the user or device location.

Our dynamic API Gateway plays a crucial role in optimizing and securing real-time API traffic. It efficiently routes requests to the appropriate microservices, enforces strict authentication and authorization policies and ensures high performance through load balancing and rate limiting. Designed to safeguard data and services for both internal and external API consumption, the gateway incorporates advanced encryption and identity management. We implement ephemeral proxy endpoints and serverless execution to minimize attack surfaces, providing dynamic, scalable and secure API interactions.

Netcracker API gateway works together with service mesh to further enhance security, performance and scalability. Employing a hidden topology conceals the CSP's infrastructure layout from external entities, making the architecture less visible. This facilitates secure communication between services without exposing underlying infrastructure details, preventing unauthorized access and enhancing security. Additionally, features such as throttling and rate control help mitigate the risk of API and denial-of-service attacks.

Make It Easy to Expose APIs and Expand Monetization Opportunities

Netcracker provides an intuitive API Exposure Platform for managing, exposing and maximizing the value of APIs, serving internal teams, external partners and developers.

Internal users gain full control over APIs and integrations, including defining access rights, creating policies, managing endpoints and onboarding clients. With access to a comprehensive Open Knowledge Base and integrated API Gateway, internal teams can efficiently manage APIs, connectors and templates across multiple platforms.

For external users, including partners and developers, APIs can be seamlessly integrated into any marketplace, allowing easy discovery, subscription and interaction to foster collaboration and ecosystem development. In addition, our APIs offer flexibility for distribution across multiple platforms. Whether it’s cloud-based marketplaces, industry-specific platforms, code-sharing repositories or Netcracker’s own Digital Marketplace, our APIs can be made accessible wherever the CSP’s audience is, ensuring broad reach and greater adoption potential. This diversity of deployment options enables CSPs to choose the most suitable channels for their API offerings, maximizing visibility and monetization potential across different ecosystems.

Our multitenant solution ensures that different stakeholders, from internal teams to external clients, can access the right API resources tailored to their needs.

Netcracker Converged Charging System enables CSPs to monetize APIs in any way, unlocking new revenue opportunities through flexible subscription models, dynamic pricing and the creation of value-added services. Leveraging plug and play developer APIs, such as those from CAMARA, further enhances the ability to gain value from APIs by simplifying access to valuable network assets.