Amdocs is ruining your business to keep their empire. AI to the rescue!

Let’s be clear about why Amdocs and friends are “still working on implementation” of TM Forum Open APIs in 2025. Short answer: because your pain is their profit. They know these standardized APIs would free you from integration hell. But as it stands, you’re burning 80% of your IT budget on integration and customization, leaving a measly 20% for actual innovation.¹

Need proof of the scale of this problem? Vodafone’s chief IT systems architect Lester Thomas shared that they have 180 BSS/OSS applications in each of their 24 markets.² That’s 4,000+ applications that need to work together seamlessly, each with its own byzantine maze of operations, infrastructure, and processes. And they’re not alone—every telco is fighting this same battle around vendor interoperability at scale.

The real question isn’t when Amdocs will finally implement these APIs. The question is: do we even need to wait for them? Could AI provide another way?

The integration trap

First, let’s frame the real problem. When you start connecting enterprise systems together, you’re building a web of dependencies that becomes increasingly complex with each new integration. What starts as a “simple connection” between two systems grows into a tangled maze of integrations that few people fully understand, and everyone is terrified of messing with.

Here’s what really happens when you go down this path:

• The ripple effect: Change one system, break 100 others. A “simple” BSS upgrade can drag on for years and cost millions. Just ask VEON about its $350M Ericsson BSS upgrade disaster. 
• Integration expertise drain: Your experts are leaving. Their knowledge walks out the door with them. Your only option? Pay premium rates to the same consultants who built these Frankenstein systems. Just ask AT&T what it’s like burning through $1.2B per year on Amdocs alone.
• The agility paradox: The more integrated your systems, the harder it is to change anything. Today’s tech companies launch services in days; it takes your team years to get anything out the door. Those integrations meant to make you efficient? They’re now your biggest constraint.

Standard APIs are the starting point

TM Forum’s Open Digital Architecture (ODA) initiative is tackling a crucial part of the vendor interoperability challenge. The foundation is solid: standardize BSS interfaces through open APIs, enabling telcos to mix and match components like digital LEGO blocks. These standardized APIs are essential infrastructure for the future of telecom innovation.

But here’s where it gets messy: Even with perfect API standardization, you’re still dealing with a maze of different data models scattered across your enterprise. Each vendor maintains its own special way of modeling customers, products, and services. It’s like they’re all speaking different dialects of the same language. Sure, they might expose these through a standardized API interface, but underneath? It’s still a tangled mess of incompatible data structures. When one vendor’s “customer” is another’s “subscriber” and another’s “account,” how do you maintain a single view?

But let’s face it: your vendors aren’t racing to comply with TM Forum Open APIs. Why would they? Their business model thrives on keeping you trapped. Pre-integrated solutions and professional services revenue are too profitable to give up. It’s not a technical limitation—it’s their strategy.

Breaking free with AI

Let’s be blunt: You don’t need to wait for your vendors anymore. AI can already:

• Generate and translate code between systems in real-time
• Map your entire integration landscape in days
• Translate between data models instantly
• Adapt to new business rules on the fly
• Process your entire application landscape in seconds
• Turn plain English into technical implementations

While your vendors spend years “studying” TM Forum APIs, AI is already solving the problem. This isn’t made up; these capabilities exist today. Your vendors know this—it’s why they’re fighting so hard to keep you locked into their old ways of working.

The question isn’t if this can be done; it’s how much longer you’ll let vendors like Amdocs profit from your pain. In my next blog, I’ll show you exactly how Totogi is using AI to break vendor lock-in for good. Your vendors won’t like it. But you will.

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1. TM Forum How to Lead in the Open API Economy, January 2021

2. TM Forum Quick Talk Podcast: Did someone say it’s all about openness?, July 16, 2020

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