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Interlude Scope as per MEF55

Referring to MEF55 document the Interlude reference point is used by Service Orchestration Functionality to request initiation of technical operations or dynamic control behavior associated with a Service with a partner network domain. The dynamic control (Service Control Orchestration) behavior is elaborated in section 8.2.3 of MEF55 as

• Scheduling, assigning and coordinating service control related activities;
• Undertaking necessary tracking of the execution process of service control requests;
• Adding additional information to an existing service control request under execution;
• Modifying information in an existing service control request under execution;
• Modifying the service control request status, and indicating completion of a service control request;
• Canceling a service control request; - Monitoring the jeopardy status of service control requests, and escalating service control requests as necessary;
• Instantiating, when appropriate, an event for the billing system to capture the policy-constrained change.

MEF55 also differentiates Order Fulfillment Orchestration, Service Configuration and Activation, Service Control Orchestration. While Order Fulfillment Orchestration deals with establishing or modifying a service through the ordering process, Service Control permits the service to be dynamically changed within specific bounds described in policies that are established at the time of ordering. After a service is provisioned and established, LSO may enable Service Control to Customers/parties, such as the ability to modify attributes subject to schedule policies and service constraint policies with for example specified ranges of valid values. Service Control relates to capabilities such as turning on or off connections, throttling bandwidth or other QoS characteristics, etc.

So considering the scope in MEF55, Interlude reference point is primarily used for Service Control Orchestration. Here Service Control Orchestration is considered to be an activity enabled after service is being provisioned. So service order management is not defined in the scope of MEF Interlude but expected to be carried over the SONATA interface (Product Order Management) and Legato (Service Order Management, Service Catalog Management).

MEF Interlude Interactions

The interactions factored in the MEF Interlude Reference point are as follows

• Service Provider controls aspects of the Service within the Partner domain (on behalf of the Customer) by requesting changes to dynamic parameters as permitted by service policies.
• Service Provider queries the operational state of the Service.
• Service Provider requests change to the administrative state of a service or service component (e.g. Service Interface)
• Service Provider requests update to defaulted service parameters which are allowed to be customized (policy-controlled)
• Service Provider requests the creation of connectivity between two Service Interfaces as permitted by established business arrangement.
• Service Provider provider queries the Partner's Service Inventory for services provided by the Partner to the Service Provider.
• Service Provider receives Service specific event notifications from the Partner.
• Service Provider receives Service specific performance information from the Partner.
• Service Provider requests test initiation and receive test results from the Partner.

The green one'sare s are interactions currently supported in External API across SP-Partner as part of the CCVPN use case. In addition to the above-listed capabilities (in green) already supported by Ext-API , there are two other capabilities -also supports following interactions

• Service Provider Queries the Service Catalogue for the offered Services by Partner

• Service Provider places Service Order for a Service offered by Partner

The last two interactions are not specifically scoped as part of Service Control Orchestration in MEF55, but in the External-API discussions it was also clarified that Service Orcder management API can be reused for placing the Service provisioning request and also for Service Control/Configuration. This may be used as an additional capability in the absense of a full fledged OSS system through which the Product Order and specific contracts that can be exchanged between parties. Out of the missing capabilities, dynamic service control, service-specific event notifications and service-specific performance information exchange between the service provider and partner are some of the key capabilities that need to be enabled in ONAP Ext-API to support interlude reference point.[Not specifically Interlude Capability as per MEF Interlude]
-Service Provider queries operational state of the Service. [via Ext-API Service Inventory API]