TM Forum - TM Forum Catalyst Showcase

The TM Forum Catalyst Program directly supports TM Forum’s objectives to provide practical solutions to improve the management and operation of information and communication services.

The program contributes to the growth and development of the NGOSS framework and detailed specifications by encouraging the wide availability of viable commercial off the shelf products using NGOSS principles. It provides an environment where service providers can pose real world challenges and directly influence the system integrators, hardware, software, and middleware providers to define, develop, and demonstrate solutions. Projects within the program are delivered in a very short timeframe typically 6 – 9 months and the results are presented at the Catalyst Showcases at Management World events.

Projects being showcased at Management World 2008 in Nice are:

End-to-End B/OSS Framework - Championed by BT Wholesale
The team will demonstrate a standardized BSS /OSS solution framework in the wholesale market for a business challenge that benefits both wholesale and reseller service providers. The team is exploring the introduction of retail/white labeled products/services for reseller’s customers from a wholesale communication network/service provider resulting in a reduced time to market and a faster realization of revenue for wholesale products.

TM Forum member companies involved include: Aricent, BT Wholesale, Ceon, Convergys, Infosys Technologies Ltd., Oracle and Subex.

Delivering an Industry Information Infrastructure – Championed by Telecom Italia
This project will demonstrate how BSS, OSS, network element vendors and systems integrators can collaborate to enable service providers to reduce integration costs, improve time to market and improve communications across their own systems and organizations as well as with trading partners by adopting concepts of the TM Forum Information Framework (also known as SID).

The project will focus on equipment related information and will provide demonstrable examples of how ERP applications, traditional OSS and even EMSs and network elements can use a commercial, globally managed industry information infrastructure and Master Data Management technology to enable the use of common information (format & structure) based on a common language (dictionary & syntax) across systems, organizations and trading partners.

TM Forum member companies involved include: Cisco, SAP, SITA, Telecom Italia and Telcordia Technologies.

Seamless OSS/BSS for IMS Services Phase II – Championed by China Unicom
Following the first phase of the highly successful “Seamless OSS/BSS for IMS Services,” which demonstrated how a variety of IMS services, accessed from many terminals, can create and deliver IMS services based on SDP, and how IMS product and services can be created, Phase II goes on to develop this work by:

Demonstrating a richer IMS services experience
Covering the total solution of OSS/BSS for IMS services:
- From IMS services creation, delivering
- To IMS services management, subscribing and activation
- To IMS services billing, charging

TM Forum member companies involved include Amdocs, Avaya, China Unicom, Microsoft and ZTE/ZTEsoft.

The Harmony Catalyst – Phase II – Championed by BT
The key purpose of the series of joint Catalyst projects between TM Forum members and DMTF members is to demonstrate co-existence and interoperability between the TM Forum Information Framework (SID), the DMTF Common Information Model (CIM) and the TM Forum Multi Technology OSS Program (mTOP) based management systems. This harmonization is achieved through realization of NGOSS contracts and using unified mapping methodology between different Information & Data Models and interfaces in the context of the end-to-end management. This phase of the Catalyst project will be based on the infrastructure and services created during the first phase from Management World Nice 2007, which addressed issues of general interoperability between management systems, and will focus primarily on Customer Experience and SLA monitoring performed transparently across transport (MTOSI) and enterprise (CIM) resources.

This project will deliver a collaborative Demonstration Platform that can be used for ongoing development for standards in Customer Experience Management (focusing initially on QoS).
The team will demonstrate benefits from various perspectives:

Provider Quality of Service Management of NGN (Deployment, Fulfillment and Assurance) for IPTV, VoIP and Web
Customer: Self service for QoS and request for content
Standards: The use of a variety of standards from TM Forum and DMTF within an integrated solution

TM Forum member companies involved include Amdocs, BNM Inc, Harris Stratex, Huawei, Iona, Nortel, Progress Software and Telchemy.

Building Marketplaces through Managed Services Syndication - Championed by BT, Microsoft and Telefonica R&D
Service syndication is becoming a hot-topic within the industry, but few people know how to make it work. To become a powerful player in this marketplace, each service provider must have the capability to rapidly assemble and re-assemble new services out of its resources. This is possible in a framework that supports service lifecycle management, such as TM Forum’s Service Delivery Framework. Successful delivery of the end service to customer requires also business agreements and common understanding of how to expose services and what kind of data must flow from one service provider to another.

The Catalyst will also focus on end-to-end service management by targeting a Service Quality Management use case that depicts event generation and subscription technologies. A new concept for manageable services from Microsoft will also be introduced as an enabling technology for end-to-end service quality management.

TM Forum member companies involved include Accenture, BT, CA, Iptiva, Microsoft, Netcracker, Telefonica and Tribold.

Operator User Management – Championed by Telefonica and Vodafone D2
As the TM Forum CO~OP team tackles the question of how to integrate different management systems, the question of easing the user login and preventing a decrease in security quickly arises. The CO~OP team set out to find a workable approach that would guide us into the future. The CO~OP Team, working with select mobile service providers, is defining a Single Sign On solution along with Operator User Management capabilities to provide a comprehensive solution. The project will demonstrate a solution that is easy to use and to administer, is secure, is future proof, and that allows plug-and-play.

TM Forum member companies involved include Nokia Siemens Networks, Telefonica, Vodafone and Wipro.

End User Device Management
This year, for the first time, we will be showcasing a program within a program, featuring end user device management, where we will be exploring various aspects of this increasingly important element of our business.

Zero Touch Deployment – Championed by Orange Netherlands
The internal IT organization in Cisco is in the initial phase of deploying 115,000 fixed and mobile devices to the homes of 30,000 Cisco tele-working employees. They have created an innovative technique for drastically reducing the total cost of ownership.

This project leverages the TM Forum’s Catalyst approach to involve other companies in the industry - service providers, device manufacturers and their supply chains - to work together to develop and demonstrate an industry standard based on the results of this project.

The market for zero-touch deployment for remote gateway, voice and video devices over the Internet is large and growing, across all the large corporate enterprise verticals, e.g. real estate and banking, so this represents a significant business opportunity for TM Forum members in many categories.

TM Forum member companies involved include Orange Netherlands and Cisco.

Delivering Device User Support – Championed by Orange Netherlands
This Catalyst project addresses a user support process for digital lifestyle, digital home, home network, and consumer electronics appliances. This process is a new management applications area in the industry.

The intent of this Catalyst is to leverage the TM Forum to reach out to a range of companies in the industry - service providers, other device management software vendors, systems integrators, and device manufacturers - to work together to develop and demonstrate an industry standard approach.

TM Forum member companies involved include Orange Netherlands and Peak8 Solutions.

One Stop Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) Services – Championed by Chunghwa Telecom Lab and Telus Telecom
This team will deliver triple-play services to customers with Fixed-Mobile convergence technologies. The FMC solution will be deployed turnkey, including network implementation and system integration services ensuring a smooth migration.

This Catalyst project will demonstrate how Fixed-Mobile converged services can be delivered over a new generation OSS/BSS architecture. Key to success in the NGN world, and therefore the challenge, will include the new NGN adapting to current OSS/BSS architectures and networks. Policies and management methodologies will also be changed and, most importantly, the delivery of ubiquitous services to customers over unlimited access devices must be achieved.

TM Forum member companies involved include Amdocs, Chunghwa Telecom Lab., Microsoft, NSN Taiwan, TATA Consulting Services (TCS), Tech Mahindra and Telus Telecom.

Content Encounter Phase II
Monetizing Services for the Digital Media Market
Championed by AT&T, BT, China Unicom and Chunghwa Telecom

Content Encounter is TM Forum’s Interactive Digital Media and Communications Village at Management World.

It’s a hands-on demonstration that shows the critical elements necessary for monetizing digital media services plus a development environment for working on the critical standards that support commercializing these types of services.

Attendees get to see and interact with real services throughout the content lifecycle – from creation to consumption. In addition, attendees learn about and discuss the TM Forum best practices and standards that help define the ‘touch points’ between the systems and business processes of all the players in the extended value chain.

Building on the success of the first phase of this project, Phase II takes a more in-depth look at content metadata, advertising services, a converged services catalog, operational assurance, revenue management and content service quality management using numerous TM Forum initiatives, including Service Development Framework, Service Level Agreement Handbook specifications, Global Billing Association processes, Revenue Assurance Guidebook, Business Process Framework (eTOM), Information Framework (SID), Application Framework (TAM) and others.
TM Forum member companies involved include Alcatel-Lucent, Cognizant, IBM, Microsoft, Motorola, Subex and Telcordia.

To find out more about any of these Catalyst projects or to see how your company can become involved in future projects, please contact Andrew Chalmers, Catalyst Program Director.