The Device Management Summit held in the heart of the Silicon Valley this week was a success, not only as a meeting of minds, but as an opportunity to explore new related technologies.
 
A significant new step forward was also taken by the TM Forum.  Chuck Trent, VP of Information Technology from Cisco, described the need to leverage the TM Forum collaboration program to consolidate Enterprise IT requirements for device management, in order to reference them in the procurement process to service providers and device manufacturers.  He offered to help us document these for review and to help engage his peers (CIOs) in other large enterprises across other industry verticals (e.g. banks, real estate) to participate.   Chuck wants to redeploy many people on his staff who are currently engaged in activities managing devices that are not part of his core business, since he prefers to outsource these activities to his service provider and device manufacturer suppliers.

Chris Albano of Comcast, together with Jim Thomsen of Westell and Jim Hunter of 4HomeMedia,  participated in a lively discussion of device management in the home networking context, that included Matt Herdlein of Telcordia and Uwe Alkemper of Detecon.  The requirements and business drivers for device management were introduced by Abraham Joseph of the Device Management Forum, who also led the panel.

Architecture implications of these business requirements were addressed in a second panel, with Jaime Fink of 2Wire (representing the DSL Forum, which is now has a new name – the Broadband Forum), Frank Den Hartog of the Home Gateway Initiative, and Stan Moyer who is President of the OSGi Alliance.  Jim Hunter offered another perspective from his experience in CableLabs.  The TM Forum will be contributing to the understanding and definition of device management requirements across the industry.

Following the summit were two days of sessions and interactions at Connections 2008 with its 1000 attendees and exhibitors, which also included the TM Forum demonstrations of zero-touch deployment, integrated CPE testing, and delivery of device user support.  TM Forum members attending commented that  this was a very important opportunity -- they were able to engage new companies to work with them in their businesses, and with us in the TM Forum.  Even though the event was much smaller than Management World, they were able to gather an equal number of quality contacts.

Another comment was that they attended not so much to participate in TM Forum work or to meet customers (which they are able to well accomplish at Management World) but to explore a part of the industry that is innovating in ways they do not normally see and ensure their capability to address these requirements.  And that this event delivered on that expectation.

Perhaps the most gratifying comment of all was that the TM Forum activities in device management have come a long way since we launched them last year.  They need to – the industry is moving very fast!

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