RegisterCatalyst projects, and Incubator Lab and a Blockchain sandbox are some of the pragmatic ways in which TM Forum tools and best practices are being tested, proven and implemented against a variety of industry challenges and use cases to drive innovation and accelerate r&d.
Catalyst projects
TM Forum Catalyst projects are rapid fire, member-driven, innovative, proof-of-concept projects which inform and leverage TM Forum best practices and standards. They connect service providers, technology suppliers, and global enterprises to create innovative solutions to common industry challenges. Over the past number of years the IoE program has produced a portfolio of Catalysts which bring best practices and standards to life in real world scenarios ensuring the value of these assets is proven in complex partnership scenarios.
IoE & Digital Ecosystem use cases were explored in the Catalyst projects demonstrated at Digital Transformation World in May 2019.
The following are some examples of the use cases that have been explored:
- Blockchain
- Smart City
- IoE Monetization
- Ecosystem Management
- Smart Health
- Smart Energy
- Smart Industrial Manufacturing
as well as the following challenges:
- New business models
- Digital Experience
For more information on joining or creating a Catalyst project click here.
Incubator Lab
Some Catalyst projects have been through several iterations and have reached the point where they have a solution that is suitable for commercialization. In order to manage this process and enable the key accelerators that commercialization will entail, TM Forum has created an incubator approach in the form of a lab-based collaboration environment.
The Incubator will accelerate innovation, growth and problem solving to deliver pragmatic best practice, dramatically reduce the r&d project costs and failure rates and give the Catalyst ecosystem access to independent research and community input.
This service offers facilitation think tanks, a virtual lab, a validation think tank and and action tank phase.
Smart Life Think Tank at TM Forum’s Action Week 2017
Blockchain Sandbox
Some of the key IoE challenges involve finding effective ways to monetize the IoE services, ensuring security and privacy for all stakeholders, creating successful partnerships and innovating business model to enable the new opportunities.
Blockchain technology could offer an answer to these and has a critical part to play in establishing trust, with it’s immutable audit trail. While it is best known for its use as the public ledger for bitcoin transactions it has many applications beyond this that communications service providers can capitalize on.
Blockchain is becoming a key part of the IoE monetization work TM Forum is doing with members to build the technical foundations for a platform business. This work kicks off with a number of proof of concept Catalyst projects to prototype and test ideas quickly.
- Applied Innovation: Investigate the role of blockchain technology in Catalysts and incubators
- IoE Roadmap of Challenges: Correlate blockchain solutions with specific challenges
- Monetization and Management: Demonstrate use cases that prove blockchain value in improving monetization and management
- Trust, Security & Privacy: Demonstrate blockchain benefits in use cases that highlight the role of blockchain in establishing support for trust
- Partners: Develop jointly-produced models and templates that connect IoE Monetization, Management and Trust with adjacent topics, e.g smart contracts, computational law.
- Sandbox: Provide an online lab environment (sandbox) that supports the above activities
Smart Energy:
Smart Energy Catalysts have addressed:
- Provisioning smart home devices in demand side management programs
- Microgrid and DER partner integration and asset management
- Customer centricity across mulitiple channels of communication
- Cybersecurity in mission-critical operations
- Data analytics that deliver strategic and tactical value
- New digital services development
- Mobile workforce and mobility apps
WINNER, Most Innovative Catalyst project: Smart Energy: Connected home devices and electric vehicles for smart energy benefits:
Building on previous projects showcased in San Jose 2014 and Nice 2015, this Catalyst project showcased several examples of overall inter-connected smart energy end-to-end flows. It also added new key areas, use cases and scenarios that interconnect and combine smart energy with other Internet of Things applications in entirely new contexts.
Watch more on the Smart Energy Catalyst from the TM Forum Catalyst InFocus event in November 2015: