During Management World 2009 in Nice this past spring, one of the highlights of the opening keynote session was the presentation of the 2009 TM Forum Excellence Awards. TM Forum established the Excellence Awards program in 2007 to recognize the global leaders in operational excellence and acknowledge the contributions that continue to take this industry in new and innovative directions. This year, TM Forum recognized achievement in two categories – Best Practices -Supplier/System Integrator and Best Practices-Service Provider.

Andrew Feinberg, President & CEO of NetCracker, accepting the Supplier/System Integrator Best Practices Award at the Excellence Awards.

NetCracker Technology was honored in the Supplier/System Integrator category for its adoption of TM Forum's standards including the Business Process Framework (eTOM), Information Framework (SID) and Application Framework (TAM), as well as OSS/J and MTOSI, all of which has proven critical in achieving business, operational and solution implementation benefits.

According to Sanjay Mewada, Vice President of Strategy at NetCracker, the award and the recognition that comes along with that has been very positive in the months since receiving it. “As an OSS vendor, TM Forum really is the place to be in terms of being a one-stop shop, so getting recognition from your peers makes the award that much more credible and worthwhile,” he says.

He specifically points to the revamped format of how the awards were decided as a key reason why his company views the Excellence Awards process in such a good light.

“The important distinction this year is that the selection of the winner in our category was made by the service providers themselves,” he says. “It wasn’t decided by some anonymous committee in a smoked-filled room, so I think the credibility of the award is significant because awards ultimately are only as good as their credibility.”

He also says fairness was a key component during the entire awards evaluation process. “The overall process was well run, and TM Forum made sure the process worked and that the integrity was maintained throughout,” he says. “It was as impartial as it could possibly get.”

That fairness carried over to making sure the over 100 service provider member companies that participated, regardless of size, had an equal vote for the Supplier/System Integrator awards. If 50 individuals within one provider cast ballots, the company receiving the most votes would receive the single vote from that provider.

Mewada says he was also pleased with the new Excellence Awards format consisting of just two award winners. “Often by having 40 different categories, you’re just trying to please a wide range of people, and actually in the end you end up pleasing no one,” he says. “Just having the two categories in many ways brings it down to the basics; you could say the industry is about two types of companies anyway – the providers and their suppliers – so just focusing on these two categories and eliminating the rest was a very smart move.”

The overall impact of receiving this recognition has been very positive for his company over the past few months, says Mewada, and NetCracker is publicizing this achievement in marketing materials and through its web site. He adds that while it’s too early to say that winning the award has affected the company’s relationship with its customers, he does say that there is a positive reaction on the part of customers and prospects.

“People are not going to make a decision on just that one metric, but clearly it would be something they’d include as one of their considerations,” he says.

Mewada would also strongly encourage other companies to participate in the TM Forum Excellence Awards in the future. “In many ways, there is no better recognition for your capabilities or your products than entering into a competition like this,” he says. “I’d highly recommend anyone to participate in this process.”

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New 4G Initiative Welcomes Member Input

TM Forum recently initiated a program to address the key management challenges of the emerging 4G networks, embracing both the ‘Operational’ issues and the ‘Customer and Revenue Management’ issues associated both with the new technologies and the new capabilities that 4G will bring to the market place. In incubation stage we have already:

• Launched a team lead by Huawei to look at management of convergent wireless-wireline networks. This team hopes to work closely with 3GPP, OMA, the Broadband Forum and others and build on existing TM Forum information models and interfaces to deliver solutions to manage convergent networks.
• Initiated an information gathering exercise via discussions in a number of our communities to encourage feedback on the challenges and opportunities presented by the new 4G technologies. We plan to run a survey in the run up to Management World Americas and will produce a whitepaper documenting our findings.

We are very interested in hearing from anyone who wishes to participate or contribute to any of our 4G work. You can do so by joining the discussion, joining the community, joining the technical team or by emailing your suggestions directly to Marie Murphy.

In addition, read the 4G Blog for more thoughts on managing 4G networks and services and to provide your thoughts.

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Management World Americas Training: Why You Should Attend

TM Forum Training sessions will take place on Sunday, December 6, Monday, December 7 and Thursday, December 10 during Management World Americas in Orlando.

In addition to courses on Business Process Framework (eTOM), Information Framework (SID), Revenue Assurance and Cloud Computing, we’ll be offering Knowledge Certification exams on Business Process Framework and Information Framework.

Andrew Chalmers, Director of Training and Education at TM Forum, answers a few questions about these upcoming courses and why TM Forum members should seriously consider investing a day or more to increase their knowledge.

Who should attend these courses?
The Solution Frameworks overview is an entry level course. As such anyone who needs to have an understanding of the basic concepts behind the Solution Frameworks will benefit. Recently, in addition to the perhaps more obvious candidates – architects, process analysts and another more “technical” disciplines, we have had attendees from HR, marketing, sales, procurement and customer relations. We’ve also had another new attendees, including managers, technicians, team leaders and people with years of experience in the industry.

The Business Process Framework Implementer’s Workshop is slightly more advanced and is designed for people with some knowledge of the subject. It builds on the first course by looking at the practical uses of the framework. Having said that, more and more we are getting people coming along for both the overview and the workshop. The audience remains the same.

What business transformation challenges are addressed in these courses?
“Business Transformation” is one of these terms that means different things to different people, from taking a step back and reviewing how a business is performing, to looking at a single department or area of the business to see how it can be made more efficient. The courses give the attendees the tools and skills to be able to address these challenges. Our instructors are experienced and knowledgeable and are happy to focus on any particular project that the class finds interesting.

What does Certification mean for attendees and to their companies?
Successful examinees join quite an elite band of TM Forum certified practitioners. On a personal front, knowledge of the framework, how to use it and the relationship it has with other standards and frameworks is demonstrable. From a Company perspective, having knowledgeable staff working on projects and using the frameworks, the industry standard frameworks,  to provide technical solutions to business problems means that industry best practices are being used by proven practitioners – internally or externally.

Why are these courses worth the time investment on the part of attendees?
The frameworks have been developed as a result of thousands of man-hours, devoted across several years. Those involved reflect our membership. A range of backgrounds and skills from across the communications industry have resulted in a set of standards that are tried and tested. Consequently anyone using these standards has all of that effort behind them. There is no need to start any project from first principles. The first time that the process framework is used to address any project, the cost of the training in terms of time and money will instantly be recouped.

Does TM Forum also deliver Training specifically geared towards a special interest or perspective?
The Forum exists to support the membership. While the frameworks can be used by anyone, there is a niche to provide more specialized training to reflect both the nature of the member: fixed line, mobile, content and so on and the type of services that the members provide – ISV, consultant, service Provider for example. Consequently we are able to gear our training to address any specialized requirements.