Team Action Week, is the industry’s premier “working event” for cultivating and improving standards, best practices and guidelines.  And in Baltimore, our largest Summer Team Action Week since 2004 with a record 166 delegates,  there was a palpable sense of our industry moving forward; a clear understanding that our game has changed and will continue to change, and that if we are going to win we need to constantly renew, innovate and plan for the future.

That forward-looking sense of changing our game was clearly apparent in the new topic areas that attracted significant interest and participation, the profile of attendees at the event, and the increased number of substantial contributions being made by members in order to produce standards and pragmatic best practices & guidelines at a more rapid rate.  Examples from the event of this progress include the areas and topics highlighted below.

Interface Strategy:

TM Forum’s interface strategy is to base future interface development on model driven software tools, moving to a machine-assisted approach for the generation of interfaces from Frameworx reference models, along with test kits and reference implementations in order to increase speed of development while improving quality and ensuring interoperability. This approach, recognizing and embracing the benefits of machine-assistance, is unique in our industry.

This strategy permeated many of the meetings in Baltimore:

1. A prototype Interface Development Tool has been created by working teams within the TM Forum and a full day of training on usage of the tool was provided to interface teams, supported by a more general Implementer’s Workshop
2. Level 4 Process Decompositions in the Business Process Framework (eTOM) based on contributions by Huawei Technologies and Progress Software are underway to continue to prepare this body of work so that interfaces and APIs can be automatically generated
3. The Information Framework (SID) is also being actively modified to ease automation and interaction with such tooling.

Convergence:

Arguably the hottest topic of the week was convergence, the move to all-IP networks, and the complexity of managing these converged and hybrid networks. A large group of service providers, represented at Team Action Week by delegates from Deutsche Telecom and Vodafone, has requested a set of interoperable interfaces and APIs to provide them with the capability to provide end to end management of their complex converged networks.  The immediate priorities are in the areas of Fault Management, Performance Management and Inventory Management.  A plenary presentation was given by these service providers during Team Action Week, underlining their commitment to driving for commonality and simplification and a reduction in the many overlapping standards in this area. Working meetings were held in the areas of:

1. Focusing the prototype Interface Development tool so that it is capable of generating these priority interfaces as a matter of urgency
2. Providing the capability to explicitly manage wireless equipment in the Information Framework (SID). The network equipment manufacturers have done this modeling already in-house, and we are encouraging them to contribute this work to the Forum in order to move this work forward more rapidly in response to the urgency expressed by the Service Provider community
3. A contribution from Huawei Technologies in the area of visualising ITIL within the Level 4 process elements of the Business Process Framework (eTOM) has been received and a new project is being kicked off in order to constantly increase the alignment between eTOM and ITIL, a key requirement as our industry evolves, with a deliverable date at the end of 2010.
4. Mapping the activities of all relevant industry organizations and standards bodies to systematically identify where there is potential for work activities to be synergistic, so that as an industry we can work together more efficiently

Network Protection and Security, Fraud Management and Enterprise Risk

Network Protection and Security, Fraud Management and Enterprise Risk Management are new topics that are moving very rapidly, in direct response to some of the changing market conditions. The move to cloud-based services and the exposure of B2B interfaces creates some unprecedented threats to the service provider environment; the enterprise buyers of cloud-based services place security as one of their primary concerns; and of course our Defense Community need to be certain that the security capability of Frameworx is appropriate for their needs.  Work activities in these areas include:

1. A significant contribution has been made by the US Department of Defense which allows TM Forum to rapidly enhance the network protection and security capability of the Information Framework (SID).  These meetings were supported by more than 15 Defense experts, a new audience for Team Action Week.  We anticipate a similar contribution of a Security Process Lifecycle to the Business Process Framework (eTOM) in the coming weeks.
2. A contribution of Fraud Management business processes has been made by cVidya Networks, which has led to a Fraud Management team meeting for the first time, and we expect the Business Process Framework to be significantly enhanced in this area before the end of 2010 as a result.
3. The ongoing Enterprise Identity Management interface project aims to replace the current expensive situation of proprietary, multi-vendor enterprise identity management and security schemes with interoperable, open standards-based Operator User Management and Single Sign-On/Off systems. In this phase of the project, the team will be making modifications to the Information Framework (SID) in support of a set of service provider requirements.

Enabling New Services, Cloud and New Business Models

The topic of Enabling New Services, including Cloud-based Services, and the rapidly changing business models of our industry also generated significant interest.  New work items underway include:

1. Adaptations to the Business Process Framework (eTOM) for Cloud-based Services
2. Service Level Agreement (SLA) Management Guidebook enhancements for Cloud-based services
3. Modifications to the Business Process Framework B2B material (GB921B) in support of the new business models that service providers need to enable in order to trade many types of products in an extended value chain
4. Extensions to the Information Framework (SID) to develop a Service Management Interface for Service Enablers, aiming to leverage work already well advanced by ATIS in this space.
5. The Business Metrics Development team identified new areas of work to improve the Business Metrics coverage for new service development and partner management

Cable

Again in the spirit of building synergies across the industry, a record number of our cable MSO and vendor members joined Team Action Week with commitment from more than 15 participants to advance a variety of topics such as:

1. Adaptations to the Business Process Framework (eTOM) for MSOs, in particular focusing on mapping the potential evolution for their businesses
2. Business Intelligence for the Cable Community
3. Quality of Service and SLA tools for managing sensitive applications such as health care, home management, home security etc.

Team Action week is also a key opportunity new teams to meet, recognition of our members who are making contributions to the TM Forum and networking with peers.  In Baltimore:

1.  New Catalyst teams to met for the first time, and we have an exciting line-up of 10 Catalysts for MW Americas
2. Outstanding Contributors were recognized, for their ongoing dedication and commitment.  We would like to congratulate Tanja de Groot (Alcatel-Lucent), Michel Besson (Amdocs Management Limited), Leen Mak (Alcatel-Lucent) and Gadi Solotorevsky (cVidya Networks) for their extensive contributions to the industry.

Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games. And there was plenty of evidence at Team Action Week that our industry understands this message. I look forward to our next Team Action Week meeting in Paris (January 17th 2011) where I expect we will see considerable progress in preparing our industry for tomorrow’s game. And we’ll test another infamous Babe Ruth assertion that “Paris ain't much of a town”!!!