In today's highly digital business environment, application programming interfaces (APIs) have become essential to the modern web ecosystem, enabling developers to access data from different sources securely and reliably. APIs allow developers to share data and functionality across applications and have become critically important in recent years.

Businesses are increasingly leveraging resources to understand how APIs work, harness their full potential, and use them to improve their customer experience, automate processes, and drive innovation. In fact, in the 4th annual State of APIs Report, it was found that 70 percent of enterprises utilized more APIs in 2023 than in 2022.

Mobile network operators are also lining up to add value to and monetize their investments in 5G (and 6G) infrastructure and offering APIs to enterprises, such as exposing location-based data to enrich mobile applications.

This newfound reliance on APIs has kickstarted a desire for API innovation, with the Linux Foundation CAMARA project leading the way. CAMARA is an open-source project within the Linux Foundation to define, develop, and test the APIs. CAMARA collaborates closely with the GSMA Operator Platform Group to align API requirements and publish API definitions and APIs.

CAMARA APIs expose telco network capabilities, enabling seamless access and facilitating application-to-network integration. These are pivotal functions for delivering enhanced and service-tailored customer experiences in the 5G era. However, the demand for API innovation has gone beyond CAMARA as enterprises begin to develop applications that work in unison with CAMARA to bolster the availability and accessibility of unique, network-aware APIs.

Recently, Shabodi, an Application Enablement Platform (AEP) provider unleashing advanced network capabilities in LTE, 5G, 6G, and Wi-Fi 6, announced they have launched the industry's first enterprise reference implementation of the Linux Foundation's CAMARA API. Any application built using CAMARA APIs can now be deployed in an enterprise setting. This enables applications built for Mobile Network Operator (MNO) environments to leverage private enterprise 5G networks.

"The untapped potential in 5G and other advanced networks is programmability in the 5G Core," said Vikram Chopra, CEO and co-founder of Shabodi. "This capability opens the floodgates for enterprise-ready applications to utilize advanced network services across multiple architectures and infrastructure."

For example, a drone application performing video surveillance can be enabled to become network-aware and leverage an enterprise Private 5G network by utilizing Shabodi's Enterprise CAMARA API reference implementation. This will allow the application to use network services such as quality of demand (QoD), location, device identification, and security APIs in private 5G enterprises and service provider network domains. The application can seamlessly leverage service provider CAMARA API Provider Implementation (PI) and Shabodi's enterprise networks Reference Implementation (RI) without being refactored.

"Developers of network-aware applications can dynamically request advanced network services to accelerate enterprise innovation and create new monetization models," continued Chopra. "Working with the open-source community has been a tremendous experience, and we are proud to be the first network-aware application enablement platform to enable a reference implementation of CAMARA's API for enterprise adoption."

Due to diverse interfaces from various network equipment providers and the complexity of interacting with networks, developing network-aware applications has been challenging. By leveraging Shabodi AEP's simplified APIs, now including a reference implementation for CAMARA APIs, enterprise applications easily consume network services and optimize network resources. This delivers a better user experience, enhanced ROI, and new monetization strategies.

"It's great to see open-source collaboration in action," said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge and IoT, the Linux Foundation. "Shabodi's CAMARA-based API is a great example of how organizations can tap collective resources to create APIs that benefit the entire ecosystem. In this case, CAMARA is used to enable enterprise applications to better optimize and consume resources across the network, ultimately creating new monetization models."

"Developers building applications on Shabodi's AEP do not need to know about the underlying radio network or the core network APIs because our AEP fills that knowledge gap, offering a faster way to create innovative applications and services," said Harpreet Geekee, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder at Shabodi. "We are empowering the advanced network developer community to do what they do best – solve complex industry and business problems."

Shabodi will demonstrate its AEP capabilities through various network-aware applications at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on February 26-29, 2024, in the Canadian Pavilion, Booth #7G61. Click here to learn more.