T8 World Summit Nice, May 8, 2009. At the T8 World Summit held in Nice alongside TM Forum’s annual Management World 2009 conference, senior executives from major communications, internet, cable and media industries* met to develop a vision on the key collaborative steps needed to unlock new markets and revenues. The summit focused on how to further enable the digital economy to grow. Executives formed a plan of action for how the TM Forum can help set the groundwork for enabling that direction.
The summit was chaired by TM Forum chairman, Keith Willetts and sessions were led by industry visionaries Dr. Werner Vogels - Chief Technology Officer at Amazon.com who is leading Amazon’s evolution to provide ‘cloud’ services; Dr. Hossein Eslambolchi - ex-CTO of AT&T where he led the transformation of AT&T’s network, systems and services and Eric Pulier one of the most successful entrepreneurs in enterprise technology .
The summit discussed market convergence; advances in service oriented software, cloud-based computing / storage and software-as-a-service approaches that offer service providers much greater freedom to decide what they do in-house and what they outsource as they strive to radically reduce operating costs. But these changes are also creating new business opportunities to enable and underpin the plethora of new digital services from a multitude of new service providers. The primary focus of the summit was on enabling and growing the Digital Economy through providing a broad range of these underpinning and enabling services.
Amazon’s successes in opening up its business platform to 3rd parties and to provide cloud computing services are good examples of this trend. Services under at the T8 discussion ranged from next generation communications networks; cloud computing to virtual billing, customer care, authentication, advertising and other enabling services. Made available as web services, these would leverage huge existing investment in secure data-centers, customer information management systems and billing capabilities that many players have, especially in telecom and could drive major new revenue streams.
The different approaches of the various segments of the industry towards the concepts of ‘platform as a service’ and ‘infrastructure as a service’ were highlighted, but it was generally agreed that similar business models can be equally applied to communications, web, cable, media or on-line retail businesses with relatively small adjustments to meet the respective industry needs.
A major barrier to growth is fragmentation if every provider of these enabling services takes a different business and technical approach. The early growth of web based services and SMS was hampered by such fragmentation and the delegates discussed the right balance between standardization and market differentiation. One of the key agreements of the Summit was to form an industry initiative, within the TM Forum, to urgently look at the key areas of standardization needed, building on its existing work in this area. These range from definitions of the relevant business models, to definition of the ‘enabling’ service software interfaces (APIs) relating to distribution, reporting and settlement, to the relevant process and information models to underpin the new business models.
The new initiative, will also look at how these new business models embrace content management challenges such as content transport, watermarking, trans-coding & fingerprinting. The initiative will be set up within the TM Forum and will involve participation from many of the players present at the meeting as well as close liaison with other relevant communications and media industry groups.
According to Matt Bross, CEO of BT Innovate and Group CTO of BT said “this is just the kind of collaborative and innovative action we want to see to grow the digital economy; generate new revenues for everyone as well as better supporting our relevant economies in these challenging times.”
Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman Ogilvy said” mobile advertising holds great allure for advertisers everywhere but today the markets are so fragmented that we are seeing little growth. Initiatives like the TM Forum’s are to be encouraged strongly if they can help break down the barriers to progress.”
Nick Heller, Director of Strategic partnerships at Google commented: “Google supports this kind of collaborative, cross industry action if it can help grow the market for everyone and reduce costs, not just for us but the growing number of 3rd party service providers out there.”
Keith Willetts, Chairman and CEO of the TM Forum said: ”We are very pleased with the participation and discussion at the T8 summit today. The Forum is well positioned to lead this initiative, working not only with our 700+ member companies around the world but also other trade bodies from the communications, media, web and advertising industries”.
*Participating companies in the T8 World Summit were:
Amazon
AT&T
Augere
BT
Cosmote Group
Etisalat UAE
Front Porch Inc
Google
iBasis Inc
Hutchison 3G
Amobee Inc
JMA
Ogilvy
SOA Software Inc.
STC
Telco 2.0
Telecom Austria
Telecom Italia
Telus
2020 Ventures
Vodafone
Virgin Entertainment
About TM Forum
With more than 700 member companies in 75 countries, TM Forum is the world’s leading industry association focused on improving business effectiveness for service providers and their suppliers. Serving the information, communications and entertainment industries, the Forum provides practical solutions, guidance and leadership to transform the way that digital services are created, delivered and charged. Members include the world’s largest service providers, cable and network operators, software suppliers, equipment suppliers and systems integrators.
TM Forum provides a wide range of information and support to help its members reduce the costs and risks associated with creating and delivering profitable services. These include industry research and benchmarks, technology roadmaps, best practice guidebooks, software standards and interfaces, as well as certified training, conferences and publications. The Forum also provides its member community with extensive marketing and networking opportunities, enabling business with new customers and partners.
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