This page shows all of the activities going on in TM Forum’s Collaboration Community including projects, interest groups and initiatives. Links on this page take you to active communities where TM Forum members are collaborating to develop and enhance our best practices and standards. Please browse this page for an overview of the work areas then visit the communities by clicking on the title bar to see discussions, work in progress, contributions and more. We are always looking for new participants in our Collaboration Community, please email the contacts on this page at any time to get involved.
Defines procurable applications that perform the processes defined in the Business Process Framework, and manipulates the information defined in the Information Framework. Participate in Benchmarking studies to compare your business and operational performance against your industry peers and gain the critical information you need to shape your future strategy. To promote discussions leading to projects in support of business process orchestration and the Lean Value Stream Management theme of the Revenue Management Initiative.
A private area where service providers participating in benchmarking can collaborate, request help with their data collection, suggest study improvements, or ask other participants to support a special study.
An open community focused on TM Forum benchmarking and studies.
Gathering and clearly defining a collection of business models illustrating strategies for growing revenue from new services. The results are produced in the "Business Model Compendium". | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | Product managers; strategists; business analysts | Iris Hauk, Infonova
Dirk Rejahl, Mediann
Jenny Rottinger, TM Forum |
| Infonova
Mediaan |
Program works with software suppliers to incorporate TM Forum’s standardized Business Metrics into products and solutions, allowing service providers to automatically upload metric data into the TM Forum Business Benchmark Database rather than collating and entering that data manually.
This by-invitation Steering Team is responsible for the evolution of TM Forum’s industry-standard business metrics, including defining new metrics, extending the Scaffold, and mentoring teams developing metrics for the metrics suite. Provides the industry's common process architecture for both business and functional processes and has been implemented by hundreds of service providers around the world. Business Process Framework (eTOM) is a key element of the TM Forum Frameworx. Business Process Framework (eTOM) has been used to analyze, improve, transform, and structure business processes in the Cable Industry. This program is focused on developing extensions, translations, and use cases for the Cable Industry. Business Intelligence and analytics are foundational to improving Cable Operations. This program focuses on standard definitions, benchmarking, KPI's, and frameworks for enabling a comprehensive Cable Business intelligence program Addressing the top needs of MSOs for standards and best practices | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | Cable MSOs; Cable Industry Suppliers of software, content, data, hardware, and services | Craig Bachmann, TM Forum
Marek Stawinski, UPC | IPDR | Cox
Time Warner
UPC
CableVision
Rogers
Ziggo ComHem | Catalogs are no longer the preserve of the Product Manager but are becoming a fundamental element to the complete Product/Service/Resource hierarchy. As our Industry shifts to using more catalog types beyond the product catalog this team will identify other types of catalogs and relation among these catalog types, scope of these, and usage followed by impact on architecture including the business processes around dynamic concept to lead to order to cash and assurance. | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | Product Managers; architects and developers focused on developing product catalog functionality | Elaine Haher, Telcordia
Jenny Ivanushkina , TM Forum | B2B Product Trading
Concept to Market | Telcordia
Comptel
Amdocs
Subex
Square Hoop
Tribold
Qwest
Chunghwa Telecom
BT
Verecloud
Conceptwave | Rapid prototyping environment where suppliers and systems integrators work together for 3-6 months to create solutions for critical industry operational and systems challenges defined by end users (service providers, MSO, defense agencies, enterprise IT departments. This is how members often get started with the Collaboration Program. | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | All TM Forum members can benefit from participation | Nora Doherty, TM Forum |
| Changes with each 6 month demonstration cycle | Introduction of Business Process Framework (eTOM) Level 4 Billing processes, modifying associated Levels 2 and 3 where necessary and related Information Framework (SID) ABEs. Subsequent to submittal to Frameworx teams, this project team will support finalization for inclusion in the year-end release of the applicable guidebooks. The primary objective of TM Forum’s Cloud Services Initiative is help the industry overcome the barriers to adoption and assist the growth of a vibrant commercial marketplace for cloud-based services. Exploring CSP cloud business models and their billing requirements and complexities in order to drive standardization. | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | Anyone in the cloud value chain, particularly CSP billing specialists, buyers of cloud services, billing vendors | Aileen Smith, (TM Forum) | Charging and Billing | MetraTech Corp. | Cloud Service Level Agreements | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | Service Providers, Enterprise Buyers | Victor Grado, Huawei | SLA Management | Huawei | Provides best practices and guidelines to utilize TM Forum Frameworx assets to enable operators and service providers to improve their C2M project management processes, governance models and organization for a smarter product delivery.
The mandate of the Data Analytics team is to help Service Providers make the best use out of business intelligence and Data Analytics tools. | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | SP Marketing Management; SP Customer-Facing Management; Data Analytics Solution Providers; System Integrators | Ian Emsley, Leader - Subex | Business Metrics
Customer Experience | Subex | The Developer Community is designed as a central place in the Online Community where developers and implementers can share experiences, problems or hints and tips. | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | Any developer or implementer using TM Forum standards in their solutions | Joann O'Brien, TM Forum | TM Forum Integration Program | TM Forum | Development and integration of Lean Sigma best practices for a communications industry-wide Improvement Approach and helping to drive TM Forum members to develop Frameworx solutions using this approach. | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | Process experts | Pradeep Naulia, HP | | HP | Supporting emerging best practices in applying TM Forum Frameworx to support energy industry needs for communications and Smart Grids | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | CSP Product Development technical professional for energy/utility vertical market | Tony Kalcina, Clarity | Energy Smart Grid | Clarity
| Virtual Private Cloud, Database As A Service | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | Enterprise Cloud Buyers | Aileen Smith, TM Forum | Cloud initiaitve | | By forming a bridge between the TM Forum’s Frameworx and the generic global ERM standards, such as ISO 31000 and the COSO ERM Framework, the TM Forum’s ERM team aims to support the lean execution of ERM within communications providers. | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | Management and Staff of SP ERM organizations; vendors of systems supporting SP ERM processes; integrators delivering ERM solutions | Eric Priezkalns, (Qtel) | Fraud Management
Revenue Assurance | Qtel | Developing standards for efficient and accurate security management including single sign-on, user and identity management and compliance reporting. Multi-phased Catalyst: multi-vendor technology demonstrator drew inspiration from the Haitian Earthquake response effort to demonstrate the need to rapidly establish communication services across a multi-national coalition and the team will tackle concepts such as dynamic discovery of services and creation of complex service value chains based on discovered elementary national contributions; secure Service Level Management information exchange across the coalition partners on a multi-lateral basis, and automated end-to-end service management. | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | Government & Defence agencies
Service Providers | Champion
Tamas Halmai, NATO C3 Agency
Martin Huddleston, UK MOD DSTL
Support Staff
Christy Coffey, TM Forum | Defense | Depends on the Catalyst phase | Fault management harmonization for Fixed Mobile Convergence | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | Interest in Fixed Mobile Convergence network management | Bill Semper, TM Forum | Multi-SDO Alignment | Ericsson
Alcatel Lucent | This team is responsible for ensuring technical consistency across all aspects of Frameworx and providing technical leadership across the TM Forum's Collaboration program. | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | Architects; anyone interested in actively driving the future of Frameworx | Dave Milham, TM Forum | Frameworx | BT, Ciena, Cisco, Huawei | Multiple projects (e.g. inventory, service management, ordering and activation and more) for creating standards and tooling for interfaces within and between service provider systems. Included are interface specifications, related Reference Implementations, and Compliance Test Kits. The TM Forum Fraud Team has been chartered to assemble and maintain best practices from operators around the world relating to both Fraud Operations Management and Fraud Detection and Resolution Management. This information will continue to be updated and expanded to account for evolving fraud tactics. | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | SP Fraud Management Management; Fraud Solution Providers; System Integrators | John Brooks. Subex | Enterprise Risk Management | Subex | Addressing the needs of government and defense agencies who are managing some of the world’s largest networks in support of the war fighter. Provides a technology-neutral information framework that can be used to jump start information modeling projects, to facilitate application integration, or any project with information related requirements. The Integration Framework, one of TM Forum’s Solution Frameworks, improves all dimensions of the enterprise, such as business processes, management data/information, applications, and integration/transformation methodology. With the Integration Framework, organizations can build systems and strategy using modular, reusable building blocks known as "Business Services"
Defining TM Forum interfaces related to multiple facets of inventory management including resource, servcie and product. Consolidating and organizing the current IPDR assets; identify new requirements for IPDR future | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | Businesses & individuals with interests in digital aggregation points whether they be network, data or server based. | Kevin Alcox, OpenVault
Craig Bachmann, TM Forum
| IPDR Usage Data Management
| OpenVault
CableLabs
Amdocs | The overall objective of theTM Forum IPsphere program is to enable and support the "Monetized business of IP" by defining an open, multi-stakeholder framework aligned with SOA principles for the rapid creation and automated deployment of IP-based services. | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | Service Providers and Suppliers; Systems Architects | Percy Lee, Telus
Tanja DeGroot, Alcatel-Lucent
Jenny Ivanushkina, TM Forum | IPsphere | Alcatel-Lucent
Telus | Define common XML-based Operations System (OS)-to-OS interfaces and associated tooling that enable service providers to deliver new services and products faster and at lower cost. | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | Service providers and suppliers wanting to reduce the cost of integrating and maintaining systems | Steve Fratini, Telcordia | TM Forum Integration Program (TIP) | N/A | Defining a standardized interface for management of GPON networks. | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | Service providers who are implementing GPON networks and suppliers of GPON management software | Tina O'Sullivan, TM Forum | Resource and Service Assurance in the TM Forum Integration Program |
| Addresses many aspects of Service Provider's challenge of effectively and profitablity exceeding customer's needs and expectations. These aspects exist across the customer, product, and service lifecycles. | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | SP staff members from customer experience teams; Vendors supplying customer management/customer care software and servcies | Shai Shamir, Amdocs | Revenue Management Initiative | Amdocs | Defining a new Ordering and Activation Interface which can be applied in a flexible way, thus reducing the integration tax for Service Providers. Define standards-based interface implementations (OSS/J APIs) and design guidelines for the development of component-based OSS systems. A Policy Information Exchange Interface facilitates the exchange of policy-related information amongst the various domain-specific OSSs thus enabling a distributed Policy environment. High-level functions and associated capabilities include: Request and Response Correlation, Event Reporting, Heartbeat, Acknowledgements, and Policy Exchange, Synchronization, and Negotiations. | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | Service Providers; Defense Agencies | Ron Roman, Team Lead - Telcordia
John Wilmes. SID SME - Progress Software
Christy Coffey, Support - TM Forum | Defense | DISA
Telcordia
NASA JPL
Progress Software
John Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab
MITRE
Layer 7
Detecon International
NetCracker
UK MOD DSTL
NATO C3 |
Development and integration of Lean Sigma best practices for a communications industry-wide Improvement Approach and helping to drive TM Forum members to develop Frameworx solutions using this approach. | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | Process experts | Pradeep Naulia, HP |
| HP | Defining a new Ordering and Activation Interface which can be applied in a flexible way, thus reducing the integration tax for Service Providers. Define standards-based interface implementations (OSS/J APIs) and design guidelines for the development of component-based OSS systems. | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | Service providers and suppliers wanting to reduce the cost of integrating and maintaining systems | Philippe Lalande, Oracle | TM Forum Integration Program
| Oracle
| A Policy Information Exchange Interface facilitates the exchange of policy-related information amongst the various domain-specific OSSs thus enabling a distributed Policy environment. High-level functions and associated capabilities include: Request and Response Correlation, Event Reporting, Heartbeat, Acknowledgements, and Policy Exchange, Synchronization, and Negotiations. | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | Service Providers; Defense Agencies | Ron Roman, Team Lead - Telcordia
John Wilmes. SID SME - Progress Software
Christy Coffey, Support - TM Forum | Defense | DISA
Telcordia
NASA JPL
Progress Software
John Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab
MITRE
Layer 7
Detecon International
NetCracker
UK MOD DSTL
NATO C3 | Providing fault management interfaces that are harmonized between OSS/J and MTOSI and can be used as basis for inter-operation between heterogeneous components deployed in a Service Provider environment.
Define a standard interface that includes Production, Monitor, Control and Collection of Performance related information in heterogeneous systems. Defining standard interfaces for managing carrier ethernet networks and services Developing best practices for identifying and correcting revenue leakage; standardizing the language and processes of revenue assurance | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | SP Revenue Assurance Management; Revenue Assurance Solution Providers; System Integrators | Team Leader
Gadi Solotorevsky, cVidya Networks | Business Metrics | INSERT | TM Forum’s Revenue Management Initiative is driving best practices and standards for a multitude of areas that affect revenue, from the Customer, through the Service Provider’s value stream and business processes, to the Shareholder. | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | Process-Oriented/Lean Service Providers; Their Suppliers, Partners, Customers, and Shareholders | Steve Cotton, TM Forum | Business Metrics
Customer Experience | Subex
Qtel
Huawei
Ericsson
cVidya | Entending the Frameworx with Security Management concepts. Starting by enhancing the Information Framewok with the network defense data model contributed by the NSA. Includes information and relationship for assets, events, incidents, vulnerabilities and threats. | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | Government & Defence agencies; Service Providers; Cable MSOs | Team Leader
Adam Morgan, MITRE
SID SME
John Reilly,TM Forum Staff Support
Christy Coffey, TM Forum | Defense | AT&T
Boeing Corporation
IBM
Layer 7
Logica
MITRE
NATO C3 Agency (NC3A)
National Security Agency (NSA)
UK MOD DSTL
DISA
Verizon Business |
Defining best practices for SLA management with respect to the customer to service provider interface
A forum made up exclusively of Service Providers that is intended to provide thought leadership to guide TM Forum initiatives to address Service Providers’ current pain points and strategic directions. Joining this group is by invitation. Email the contacts below if you are interested in membership. | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | Senior service provider representatives from all kinds of global service providers | Jenny Huang, AT&T
Dave Milham, TM Forum
| | AT&T | Developing end to end tooling to enable the rapid development of TM Forum interfaces based on Frameworx | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | Tool vendors; senior developers and systems engineers | Joann O'Brien, TM Forum | TM Forum Integration Program
| Open NMS, HP, Ciena, Telcoria, Deutsche Telekom | Developing information and interface specifications to manage software enabled services and third party innovation based on the TM Forum Software Enabled Servcies (SES) Reference Architecture and leveraging TM Forum Frameworx | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | CSP technical professionals involved with service enablement and 3rd-party software developer program, SDP suppliers, Cloud PaaS Providers | Johan Vandenberghe, Alcatel- Lucent | Enabling New Services | Alcatel-Lucent | The growing demand for wireless services worldwide is creating congestion which can be addressed by increased spectrum efficiency or by obtaining more spectrum; or both. Increased spectrum flexibility - to dynamically adapt network resources to more efficiently meet customer demands will benefit from standardization of Spectrum Management architectures, processes, information and data models, applications, interfaces, and testing. | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | Wireless Service Providers; Governments, and Defense Agencies | Christy Coffey, TM Forum
David Fritz, MITRE
John Lowis, Logica | Frameworx | MITRE
Logica
and Wireless Service Providers
Defense Agencies (TBD) | This group acts as a catalyst to analyse the challenges around supplier / partner cost assurance and in so doing define standards and best practices in order to overcome these challenges. | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | SP Supplier/Partner Management; S/P Relationship Management Solution Providers; System Integrators | Anne Hill, Subex | Revenue Management Initiative | Subex | Goal of the team is to expand TM Forum Frameworks in managing Network and IT resources with regard to Workforce Management in order to enhance service delivery and assurance best practices | Who benefits from participating | Contacts | Related Communities | Companies leading the project | | Service providers who are looking to streamline their workforce management; suppliers who provide workforce management products and services | Ken Dilbeck, TM Forum
Anh Tuan Le, NetCracker | Workforce Management | Netcracker | |