TM Forum is a global, non-profit industry association focused on simplifying the complexity of running a service provider’s business. As an established industry thought-leader, the Forum serves as a unifying force, enabling more than 800 companies across 195 countries to solve critical business issues through access to a wealth of knowledge, intellectual capital and standards. TM Forum’s Fraud Management Group maintains best practices in fraud operations management, fraud detection and resolution management through enhancements and revisions to TM Forum’s Frameworx suite of standards with the goal of guiding service providers in fraud protection and prevention.

As Deputy Chair, Tal is responsible for overseeing enhancements and revisions to Frameworx for the Fraud Management Process framework, and assists in reviewing, updating and extending existing manuals. He also coordinates Catalyst projects for TM Forum’s Fraud Management division. In addition, Tal assigns responsibilities and serves as a point of contact for introducing new companies into the Forum as well as produces promotional material to demonstrate the group’s work.

“Communications fraud remains one of the most significant threats to operator margins and security today. Fraud attacks occur continuously on even the most monitored networks, forcing operators to constantly improve their methods of protection,” said Aileen Smith, Senior Vice President of Collaboration and Research and Development, TM Forum. “With Tal’s deep understanding of fraud management thanks to over a decade of experience in the sector, he is an important addition to the group and key to its goal of ensuring TM Forum’s Frameworx stays well ahead of the curve in offering the most up-to-date protections against communications fraud.”

For more information on cVidya, please see: http://www.cvidya.com

For more information on TM Forum, please see: http://www.tmforum.org

Clarity, the award-winning provider of unified solutions designed to simplify the operations of communication service providers, today announced that Tony Kalcina, Executive Director, will serve as an ambassador for TM Forum’s Ambassador Network.

The Ambassador Network, which was recently launched by the TM Forum, is a network of highly experienced industry professionals focused on mentoring senior executives at TM Forum member companies. The network offers executives within member companies expert guidance to ensure they achieve maximum value from TM Forum’s extensive resources for simplifying the complexity of running a service provider’s business.

“I am delighted to have been invited to join the TM Forum’s new network as an Ambassador” said Kalcina. “I have been working with the TM Forum on their Advisory Council for almost 2 years now, and it is an honor and privilege to work with such a distinguished group of industry experts and to be able to assist other member companies in deriving the maximum value from the TM Forum’s extensive expertise.”

“The TM Forum is a global, non-profit industry association focused on simplifying the complexity of running a service provider’s business,” said Martin Creaner, president and CEO, TM Forum. “The Ambassador Network allows TM Forum member companies to connect with knowledgeable executives who are well-versed the Forum’s assets and resources. Our Ambassadors can make recommendations on how our members can work toward the development of solutions to common business issues through industry collaboration and the adoption of TM Forum best practices and standards.”

These industry experts join more than 60 speakers participating in the Global Congress program including Barry West, Clearwire and Dr Fumio Watanabe, CTO, UQ Communications. Keynote speakers include:

• Dionysis Alexandratos, COO, Cosmoline (Greece)
• Barry O’Connell, Head of Core Networks, Imagine Group (Ireland)
• Paolo Chilosi, Director General, Multilink (Haiti)
• Gabriel Perez, WiMAX Network Director, Movilmax (Venezuela)
• Jay Alvi, EVP Enterprise Services, TSTT (Trinidad & Tobago)
• Mohamed Basafi, CTO, Mobily (Saudi Arabia)
• Kuldeep Goyal, CMD, BSNL (India)

The Global Congress program will include a number of regionally driven topics including India Empowered: BSNL’s Broadband Ambitions and Strategies for Addressing the Digital Divide with WiMAX. In this session, Mr Kuldeep Goyal, CMD, BSNL will be speaking on the long-awaited BWA spectrum auctions now underway in India, the results of which are sure to leave a lasting impression upon the wider broadband ecosystem. BSNL is already leading the way in WiMAX deployments in India and have commercially launched WiMAX services regionally.
WiMAX Forum Global Congress 2010 is sponsored by Intel, Samsung, Alvarion, Huawei, ZTE, Tellabs, Motorola, Ciena, MACH and Bridgewater Systems. For more information about the WiMAX Forum Congress Series or for a full program for the Global Congress 2010 event, please visit www.wimaxforum.org.

About WiMAX Forum® Global Congress
WiMAX Forum® Global Congress 2010 is the world’s only dedicated operator-led global WiMAX event. This year, the operator led agenda of over 60 speakers features over 35 top level operator speakers who will present current case studies. Other program highlights include a pre-conference workshop ‘Successful strategies for WiMAX operators to compete and prosper in the wider broadband ecosystem’ hosted by ReWheel (15th June), Analyst Breakfast Briefings (16th-17th June), and an evening workshop led by Wireless 20/20 on 16th June. For more information please visit: http://www.wimaxforumglobalevents.com/global

About the WiMAX Forum®
The WiMAX Forum® is an industry-led, not-for-profit organization formed to certify and promote the compatibility and interoperability of broadband wireless products based upon the harmonized IEEE 802.16e/ETSI HiperMAN standard. A WiMAX Forum goal is to accelerate the introduction of these systems into the marketplace. WiMAX Forum Certified products are interoperable and support broadband fixed, nomadic, portable and mobile services. Along these lines, the WiMAX Forum works closely with service providers and regulators to ensure that WiMAX Forum Certified systems meet customer and government requirements. Through the WiMAX Forum Congress Events Series of global trade shows and events, the WiMAX Forum is committed to furthering education, training and collaboration to expand the reach of the WiMAX ecosystem. For more information, visit the trade show link at www.wimaxforum.org.

“WiMAX Forum,” the WiMAX Forum logo and the WiMAX Forum Certified logo are registered trademarks of the WiMAX Forum. “WiMAX,” “Mobile WiMAX,” “Fixed WiMAX,” “WiMAX Certified,” and “WiMAX Forum Certified” are trademarks of the WiMAX Forum. Third-party trademarks contained in this document are the property of their respective owners.

About Informa Telecoms & Media
Informa Telecoms & Media is the leading provider of business intelligence and strategic marketing solutions to global telecoms and media markets. Driven by constant first-hand contact with the industry, our 90 analysts and researchers produce a range of intelligence services including news and analytical products, in depth market reports and datasets focused on technology, strategy and content. Informa Telecoms & Media also organizes 125 annual events, attended by more than 70,000 executives.

The results were announced to a record audience of more than 3,000 senior executives from the communications and enterprise sectors at the Forum’s flagship Management World 2010 conference in Nice – Amdocs winning the Leaderships Award, Huawei the Solution Excellence Award, STC (Saudi Telecom) the Operational Excellence Award and BT winning the Innovation Award.

According to Nik Willetts, Chief Marketing Officer for TM Forum, “Competition for the Forum’s prestigious awards is always fierce, but the record number and diversity of the nominations from the outset meant that this year it was stronger than ever. The sheer volume and the quality of the entries is a true testament to the Awards and the value the industry places on them. Our sincere congratulations to all of this year’s winners.”

At the same time it was announced that Phil Dance, CIO of BT, Johanne Mayer, Director of Communications for Alcatel-Lucent’s System and Application Integration (SAI) practice, and John Wilmes, Chief Technical Architect – Communications Sector, Progress Software, have been made Distinguished Fellows of the TM Forum.

Martin Creaner, president, TM Forum commented “Only a few Distinguished Fellows awards have been given out over the 22 year history of the TM Forum, and it takes exceptional contributions like those from Phil, Johanne and John over an extended period of time to merit one. The work of our distinguished fellows, the TM Forum and the greater industry can continue to progress to meet the challenges that technology, customers and the market continue to throw at communications service providers today.”

Leadership Award WINNER: Amdocs
“Receiving recognition from the TM Forum underscores Amdocs’ ongoing dedication to the development of standards and best practices to support service providers’ successful journey to offer new services, content and applications,” said Dana Porter, vice president of marketing for Amdocs. “Amdocs is committed to TM Forum standards and they are an integral part of the Amdocs CES product portfolio. We’ll continue to take a leadership role within the TM Forum to create and drive these standards to help service providers enhance business performance and operations, launch new products quickly and personalize the customer experience.” Dana Porter, Head of Global Marketing, Amdocs

Solution Excellence Award WINNER: Huawei
“This is the recognition of our market leadership and innovation ability. Huawei BSS enables operators to save costs, improve efficiency, and optimize business processes, achieving sustainable business success through smart operation and efficient support.” Dr. Che Haiping, VP & CTO of Software, Huawei.

Operational Excellence Award WINNER: STC (Saudi Telecom)

“We are extremely happy to receive this distinguished award. We would like to thank the TM Forum for this. We would also like to thank IBM for standing by our side in this journey.” Maziad al Harbi, General Manager, Network Systems and Solutions, STC.

Innovation Award WINNER: BT (Semantic Toolset)
“Delivering successful complex transformations fast and cost-effectively is instrumental for CSP growth in a recessionary market. Focusing on the planning phase of a Change program, our innovation releases major value by delivering operational excellence faster and cheaper. Our toolset maximizes ROI and reduces migration risk by tracking complex element dependencies, analyzing “what-if” scenarios, helping decision-making with full knowledge of customer impact and avoiding conflicts and inefficiencies by harmoniously/optimally planning parallel migration activities. So by delivering multi-million transformations right-first-time, faster and with significant cost savings, CSPs improve margins and focus earlier their newly-transformed operations on core revenue-generating activities.” Nektarios Georgalas, Corporate ICT Principal Researcher, BT

Communications Service Providers participating in these projects span the globe, including BT, Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, Swisscom, Qwest, Telstra, China Telecom, China Unicom, Zain, and many others. More than 40 suppliers are participating, including the biggest names in the business such as Cisco, Microsoft, IBM, Ericsson, Huawei, and Amdocs.

Each Catalyst project comprises a multi-company team of suppliers and service providers. The team works to address requirements defined by service provider project champions. With the focus of each Catalyst driven by the service provider champion, the resulting project provides a unique view of the challenges service providers are facing, and demand innovative solutions.
Multi-company Catalyst projects typically run for 3-6 months and utilize TM Forum’s Collaborative R&D methodology, enabling service providers to have prototype solutions to their requirements in a much shorter timeframe than standard RFx and lab testing processes.

Key Facts:
The 15 Catalyst demonstrations are divided in to 6 themed areas for Management World 2010:

1. Cloud Services – Enabling the business of Cloud Services.
“Cloud Encounter “– 4 Integrated Projects addressing Cloud management scenarios
Cloud Service Broker
Inter-Cloud Service Management
Service Model
IPsphere: Bringing Quality to the Cloud

2. Revenue Management and mCommerce – Addressing revenue management challenges and new business models in a complex and changing market
Revenue Assurance Coverage Model
Developing a Scalable mCommerce Model

3. Customer Experience and Business Intelligence – Proactively managing customers and revenue to increase satisfaction and the bottom line
Standardizing Customer Experience Management
Customer Experience Management (CEM) Control Center

4. Digital Media – Profiting from Digital Media Services and New Business Models
Dynamic Content Delivery

5. Technology and Operations – Driving Operational and IT Excellence
Driving the Costs out of IPTV
Enterprise Identity Management
Successful Service Inventory Transformation
Catalog Data Driven Order Automation
Effective Sell of Advanced Network Services and Solutions

6. Defense – Applying TM Forum Best Practices and Standards to meet Defense Needs
Defense Catalyst: Rapid Communications Deployment

For a full project descriptions and lists of participating companies please visit http://www.tmforum.org/Catalysts/8342/home.html

Management World 2010 will be held at the Acropolis Convention Centre, Nice, France on May 18-20, 2010. For further details on the conference visit http://www.tmforum.org/ManagementWorld2010/7867/home.html

What the Service Provider Champions say:

Cloud Service Broker Catalyst

“The Cloud Service Broker TM Forum Catalyst provides an excellent opportunity to address the barriers to cloud adoption for enterprise customers. Whilst enterprises wish to lever value from the cloud, they are apprehensive over losing control, citing areas of concern such as IT Governance, application performance, runaway costs, inadequate security and technology lock-in. The CSB addresses this by matching cloud services to each enterprise’s needs, enforcing the right policies, and then showing how this can be backed up by an ongoing service level agreement. We believe developments of this nature will be of primary importance in future cloud services.”
John Gillam, program director, BT Global Services

IP sphere: Bringing Quality to the Cloud
“This project (IPsphere Phase 3 Field Trials) is important to Deutsche Telekom because it is essential to our development of end-to-end QoS mechanisms which will help our business departments to provide the baseline and guidelines for a full service offering towards end-to-end connectivity and application aware networking.”
Hans Joachim Einsiedler, project manager/team leader, Deutsche Telekom

“This project (IPsphere Phase 3 Field Trials) is important to Telstra because it is essential to our ongoing commitment to SDF development which is helping our business direction by providing the baseline for a full service offering through application aware networking.”
Ian Stanley, Telstra

Revenue Assurance Coverage Catalyst

“Revenue assurance coverage model that is nice recommendations for Carriers to carry out RA project, can bring benefits and lower costs, improve operational effectiveness of RA work,and enhance enterprise data quality management.”
Elvis He, China Telecom Shanghai Research Institute

“The scope of revenue assurance is quite broad and difficult to identify the areas that can generate the most ROI. The RA Coverage Model could assist us to discover a blueprint and guide us to implement the RA projects by following a systematic approach.”
Haoyang Lu, planning division, information dept, China Unicom

“The revenue assurance coverage model aims to help service providers to make better decisions based on their priorities in terms of high risk and leakage areas, as well as how to optimize their investment in RA vs. the benefits of increasing the coverage with automated controls. This model will provide a significant contribution to the RA operations and the overall business results”.
Gabriela Sobral Gil, director of revenue assurance, Telefonica Latin America

“The Revenue Assurance Coverage Model should help to answer two critical questions: Which percentage of company revenue is effectively covered by RA controls, and how to best allocate the RA resources in order to get the most return in terms of reducing risks and preventing revenue leakages”.
Idalina Vilela, head of revenue assurance, Portugal Telecom

Driving the Costs out of IPTV Catalyst

“ Video quality of experience isn’t just about how good or bad the picture looks, it’s ensuring the entire experience is a complete success – from positive interaction with customer care to the customers’ perception of swift and effective problem resolution,” said Fabien Rochette, director of gateways engineering, products and network testing, Bouygues Telecom. “As IPTV hits mainstream, scaling operational processes and cost effectively managing the entire customer experience has become increasingly critical. The TM Forum Nice Catalyst program, which demonstrates how to drive down the costs of IPTV, is helping Bouygues Telecom identify efficient practices — we get closer to our customers, and we empower customer care and operations with centralized automated systems that provide the pinpoint visibility required to assure quality of service in the home and accurately and rapidly solve problems.”

Enterprise Identity Management Catalyst
“The user management in a complex and heterogeneous OSS environment is quite difficult. TMF615 “”Operator User Management”" standardizes and simplifies the communication between a central identity management system and the OSS. The result is a minimization of the time spent for auditing and administration”
Martin Meyners, senior project manager, OSS engineering, Vodafone D2

Effective Sell of Advanced Network Services and Solutions Catalyst
“In today’s market for converged services, Qwest knows that capturing detailed design insights during the sales cycle offers valuable pricing and time-to-market benefits, stated Donald Toland, chief business architect product operations, Qwest. “By working with TM Forum, Qwest, Salesforce.com and Netformx are capitalizing on opportunities to demonstrate and evaluate these concepts.”

Customer Experience Management (CEM) Control Center Catalyst
“We see mobile broadband as a main service in Vodafone’s portfolio. Advanced modeling and measurement of customer experience with mobile broadband services lays the basis to improve our product offerings in this area with the clear goal of optimizing customer value, reducing churn and improving customer loyalty.”
Karl Wilhelm Siebert, director, regional networks & operations branch west, Vodafone

The TM Forum today announced that it is entering into an exclusive partnership with Gravitas Global, a world leader in Executive Transformation Development. The partnership will enable the TM Forum to meet the growing demands of its 700-strong corporate membership for executive development services.

Communications Service Providers today experience new challenges in almost every aspect of their organization, from major network rollouts to new business models and expanding product portfolios. Service providers and suppliers are now forced to deal with increasingly complex value-chains and outsourcing arrangements in order to compete in convergent, highly saturated markets.

The strategic partnership announced today provides TM Forum with the capability to assist their members leadership teams in successfully navigating these complex changes. A set of four highly interactive workshops, which can be tailored to focus on a company’s specific transformation challenges, will be made available immediately:

• Transformation Team Accelerator
• Cultural Transformation Accelerator
• Transformation Leadership Positioning
• C-Suite Relationship Accelerator

While the need for change may be self-evident, the leadership team tasked with making the transformation will often come from different business units or operating companies, with competing priorities and perceptions of their needs. The Transformation Team Accelerator can radically accelerate the shared alignment and sense of common purpose of the Leadership Team with their organization’s transformation goals, so they can rapidly develop a strategy and plan for the execution of their transformation program.

The Cultural Transformation Accelerator is focused on ensuring the management team feels fully involved in the transformation program and addresses organizational motivation and communication issues head on , ensuring everyone is committed to move the organization forward, often towards a more customer-centric and innovative culture.

The Transformation Leadership-Positioning workshop is aimed at helping individual executives significantly raise their ‘Leadership Game’, particularly when faced with significant leadership challenges due to transformation programs, when they need to give clear and inspiring direction to internal colleagues and external customers, suppliers and other stakeholders.

Effective interaction with C-level executives is a key requirement for all senior executives. Suppliers and providers must develop these relationships at the highest levels to successfully manage internal and external partnerships, for example with complex value chains and outsourcing agreements. The C-Suite Relationship Accelerator is focused on equipping the leadership team, and individual executives to deal successfully at this level.

“Success in today’s business and IT transformation projects is as much about dealing with the softer skills of aligning an organization with new ways of working, as it is about mastering the technological challenges,” said George Greenlee, SVP Portfolio Management, TM Forum. “This partnership will combine the Forum’s unique and independent industry knowledge with Gravitas Global’s experience in helping executives navigate significant change programs, to bring the best learning experience to our members.”

“TM Forum members deserve access to the very best senior executive and transformation alignment services for their people, and we are proud to form an exclusive relationship with the TM Forum to deliver these services to its members, worldwide,” said Gravitas Global Chairman and CEO Richard Hawkins-Adams. “With over twenty-five years experience, in Telecom, Media and Technology, at C-Suite level around the world, we look forward to helping the TM Forum and its members meet the executive and team development challenges arising from the new competitive landscape.”

The collaboration, which also involves Comptel Corporation, Infonova, OpenNMS Group and Square Hoop, will look at the role of the CSB in addressing enterprise cloud customer concerns in areas such as application performance, security and vendor lock-in. The platform will be demonstrated at Management World 2010, taking place May 18-20, 2010 in Nice.

In this TM Forum Catalyst project, developed by BT’s Innovate & Design organisation, BT Global Services will serve as both an enterprise consumer and retailer of a number of complex cloud services. The project, consisting of a definition and development phase and a final demonstration, will explore the aggregation, delivery and operation of cloud services while addressing a variety of trust and governance requirements.

The CSB Catalyst will address a number of the key concerns for Cloud adoption highlighted by TM Forum’s Enterprise Cloud Buyers Council (ECBC). The ECBC represents the interests of large Enterprise buyers and is the cornerstone of TM Forum’s managing Cloud Services Initiative – an ecosystem of cloud buyers and sellers of which BT is a key member. The goal of the ecosystem is to drive Tm Forum’s Cloud Services Initiative in order to improve the understanding of the needs of enterprise cloud buyers and to remove any potential barriers to the uptake of cloud technology.

Comptel will provide an order portal and active service catalog, to manage the different components of a service, as well as a service designer to aid the rapid assembly of cloud services. These concepts were initially demonstrated though previous catalyst collaborations with BT, namely the Product and Service Assembly (PSA) initiative and the Service Model catalyst.

Infonova will provide a billing catalog and billing engine, to manage the monetization of cloud services, and to enable the enterprise customer to be virtual operators of these services.

OpenNMS will provide monitoring services as part of service assurance

Square Hoop, through product catalogs, will orchestrate what is presented to the enterprise customer by aggregating product, service and billing information.

Gartner’s “The What, Why and When of Cloud Computing”, June 2009 predicted that “as cloud computing evolves, combinations of cloud services will be too complex and untrustworthy for end consumers to handle their integration”, and that as cloud services are adopted, “the ability to govern their use, performance and delivery will be provided by cloud service brokerages.”

With more than 700 corporate members in 195 countries, TM Forum is the world’s leading industry association focused on enabling best-in-class IT for service providers in the communications, media and cloud service markets. The Forum provides business-critical industry standards and expertise to enable the creation, delivery and monetization of digital services.

TM Forum brings together the world’s largest communications, technology and media companies, providing an innovative, industry-leading approach to collaborative R&D, along with wide range of support services including benchmarking, training and certification. The Forum produces the renowned international Management World conference series, as well as thought-leading industry research and publications.

BT is one of the world’s leading providers of communications solutions and services operating in 170 countries. Its principal activities include the provision of networked IT services globally; local, national and international telecommunications services to our customers for use at home, at work and on the move; broadband and internet products and services and converged fixed/mobile products and services. BT consists principally of four lines of business: BT Global Services, Openreach, BT Retail and BT Wholesale.

In the year ended 31 March 2009, BT Group’s revenue was £21,390 million.
British Telecommunications plc (BT) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group plc and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group. BT Group plc is listed on stock exchanges in London and New York.

For more information, visit www.bt.com/aboutbt

Frameworx expands and integrates the Forum’s existing NGOSS standard Business Process (eTOM), Information (SID), and Application (TAM) Frameworks into a full enterprise IT and process architecture that also embraces major IT industry standards such as ITIL and TOGAF. The addition of the new Integration Framework to the suite provides a service oriented integration approach with standardized interfaces and support tools. Another major step forward with Frameworx is the introduction of product certification, certified training, a certified TM Forum partner program, and extensive implementation support that will help service providers implement practical solutions based on Frameworx.

“Frameworx comes at a critical time for the market,” said Keith Willetts, Chairman and CEO, TM Forum. “With significant pressure on operating costs, service providers need an enterprise architecture that enables them to move much more quickly; to rapidly integrate new technologies and third party services; to deliver consistent services across the world; and most of all, to significantly cut operating costs. Frameworx provides the blueprint for that agile enterprise—out of the box.”

TM Forum Frameworx gives service providers and their suppliers an independent, industry-supported and standardized platform to guide new procurements and migrate their existing myriad of incompatible and fragmented processes and systems, which today often deliver poor business efficiency and delay the introduction of new services.

Albert Hitchcock, Group CIO at Vodafone, said “In today’s market we need to offer consistent services to our customers across the world, moving ever faster and delivering more to our customers at ever lower costs. A common, industry supported reference architecture, tailored to meet the particular needs of service providers is very important to us and we welcome this move by the TM Forum.”

Phil Dance, Managing Director at BT echoed these sentiments: “We encourage common industry approaches that help us build a vibrant market delivering innovative software at realistic prices. We welcome Frameworx, the TM Forum’s move to a SOE-based approach, as it future-proofs investments as the market changes. We especially welcome the ability to build systems and processes tailored to our specific business needs using a common set of standard building blocks.”

Frameworx, scheduled for full release in June 2010, is the result of a multi-year TM Forum effort and the substantial contributions of its members. A preview of Frameworx is available now at http://www.tmforum.org/frameworx and includes these new features as well as early versions of the Integration Framework:
• Telecom and IT integration, incorporating ITIL processes
• “Getting Started Guides” to enable new users to grasp quickly the information and tools available and to understand the steps needed to apply Frameworks into their environment
• Managers’ Guide overviews of Frameworx and key benefits

Frameworx is the result of extensive collaboration by the Forum’s 700-strong corporate membership through TM Forum’s collaborative R&D programs. The architecture—built for the industry, by the industry—will consist of:
• Information Framework version 9
• Business Process Framework version 8
• Application Framework version 4
• Integration Framework version 2
• A platform architecture approach to facilitate collaboration and management of value chain and outsourcing partners
• Frameworx Roadmap release 1, showing the release strategy and content for the next 12 months

In addition Frameworx will be supported by software tooling for rapid implementation; identified Business Services developed from business, information, and application framework mappings; plus certified product, training, and support services.

Key Facts
• Frameworx is an end-to-end reference enterprise architecture designed specifically for providers of digital services and based on common software standards such as Service Oriented Architecture techniques, ITIL, and TOGAF.
• Service Oriented approaches encourage business agility and re-use, essential in today’s market where service providers need to rapidly deliver new services and increase revenues in the face of changing value chains and technologies.
• Frameworx uses standard, reusable, generic blocks—Platforms and Business Services—that can be assembled in unique ways to gain the advantages of standardization while still allowing customization where necessary.
• Frameworx is aligned with standard Enterprise Architecture Frameworks populating the Business, Information, and Application layers with the existing NGOSS Business Process, Information, and Application frameworks.
• Frameworx comprises an integrated set of frameworks defining common business processes, information, and applications. Each component framework may be used individually to solve particular problems or as an integrated Service Oriented Enterprise implementation.
• Frameworx allows you to realize ITIL compliant implementations through the Business Process Framework (eTOM) which is now fully mapped to ITIL.
• Frameworx is battle hardened—its core frameworks are mature and are in use by Service Providers throughout the world. TM Forum members have published more than 150 case studies on implementation of Framework components.
• Each component Framework includes a Managers’ Guide that provides a high level view of the Framework and its benefits and a web-based “Get Started” kit.
• Through Frameworx’ reusable, standard, and consistent end-to-end process flows, solutions, and interfaces, Service Providers, Systems Integrators, and Vendors can reduce integration time and product costs.
• By procuring Frameworx-certified compliant commercial products, development time is reduced and project predictability increased.

Resources
• Learn more about Frameworx at http://www.tmforum.org/frameworx

• Participate in the Frameworx on-line communities

• Find vendor solutions that have been certified by the Certified Compliance Testing Program

• Press and analysts desiring a briefing to learn more about Frameworx should contact Geoff Devlin

• Subscribe to TM Forum’s press release RSS feed and newsletters

About TM Forum
Enabling the Digital Services Revolution
With more than 700 corporate members in 195 countries, TM Forum is the world’s leading industry association focused on enabling best-in-class IT for service providers in the communications, media and cloud service markets. The Forum provides business-critical industry standards and expertise to enable the creation, delivery and monetization of digital services.

TM Forum brings together the world’s largest communications, technology and media companies, providing an innovative, industry-leading approach to collaborative R&D, along with wide range of support services including benchmarking, training and certification. The Forum produces the renowned international Management World conference series, as well as thought-leading industry research and publications.

“The TM Forum has been calling for industry collaboration in this area for some time, and we strongly support the Wholesale Applications Community and its goals,” said Keith Willetts, CEO and Chairman of the Board, TM Forum. “The majority of operators in the new Community are already active members of the Forum, and we plan to work closely with the new group to ensure its success.”

Many challenges exist in managing the underlying business process and data for ‘long tail’ content and applications, including digital fulfillment, customer care, revenue and settlements. The Forum, which delivers business-critical standards to address the complex IT challenges communications service providers face, has been leading pioneering work in the area of content distribution and service delivery management since 2007.

“It’s critical that operators move quickly to establish value in the app market, while avoiding the mistakes of the past,” commented Willetts. “In the past, we’ve seen the market take a siloed approach to developing and delivering applications, only to be faced with significant integration and scalability challenges. It’s important for operators to adopt a common approach going forward, and this will inevitably depend on them also aligning with a standard IT architecture. TM Forum delivers the IT architecture standards and best practices that enable this kind of agility and which will be a critical success factor for a wholesale applications environment.”

Key Facts:
• TM Forum plans to work closely with the Wholesale Applications Community to ensure its success by helping to address underlying IT challenges facing operators seeking to add and derive value from the applications market.
• With billions of customers touching the network cloud to conduct business every day, service providers have a unique opportunity to add value for application developers. As a key intermediary between content developers and downstream device users, operators can leverage their cloud capabilities to improve customer engagement experience at both ends of the value chain
• TM Forum has been leading industry collaboration activities focused on the digital value-chain since 2007, when its Content Encounter program was launched to tackle the challenges in the creation, delivery and monetization of digital media services and address the impact of these services on revenue, operations and customer experience.
• The Forum’s industry leading initiatives in management of new technologies such as LTE, cloud services, revenue management and are expected to play a key role in ensuring the success of the Community.

With more than 700 corporate members in 195 countries, TM Forum is the world’s leading industry association focused on enabling best-in-class IT for service providers in the communications, media and cloud service markets. The Forum provides business-critical industry standards and expertise to enable the creation, delivery and monetization of digital services.

TM Forum brings together the world’s largest communications, technology and media companies, providing an innovative, industry-leading approach to collaborative R&D, along with wide range of support services including benchmarking, training and certification. The Forum produces the renowned international Management World conference series, as well as thought-leading industry research and publications.

Unique to TM Forum, Forumville is where theory gets put into practice. Visitors experience, first hand, deployable solutions to today’s business challenges through its highly acclaimed, multi-vendor, catalyst demonstrations driven by customer’s real world issues. Here they find powerful business answers and technical direction to current hot-topics, while learning about innovative new ideas, best practices, and standards.

• The five key innovation zones in Forumville will center around;
o Cloud Services Initiative & Ecosystem – enabling the business of cloud services – showcasing TM Forum’s first Cloud Catalyst and the ecosystem of buyers and sellers TM Forum is creating
o Service Oriented Transformation – looking at tuning businesses for the 21st century, and discovering how TM Forum Best Practices and Standards can be applied in the wireline, 4G/wireless and cable industries to enable service oriented transformation
o Customer Experience and Revenue Management – driving profitability by proactively managing customers and revenue to increase satisfaction and the bottom line.
o Digital Media and Advertising – Profiting from Digital Media Services and New Business Models – focusing on Services Syndication and Mobile Advertising Revenue Management, as well as learning about TM Forum’s best practices in managing the end-to-end value chain.
o Defense and Government – Supporting the War Fighter looking at TM Forum’s Best Practices and Standards in action in support of Defense and Government projects, including the thought-leading Defense Catalyst. demonstration.

“Forumville is where visitors can really see the TM Forum in action!” said Martin Creaner, President and COO, TM Forum. “The unique, live, multi-company catalyst demonstrations, clearly demonstrate how the Forum, through leadership and collaboration, is creating and delivering the industry standards and best practices that are driving the industry forward and allowing communications service providers to transform to new business models as they evolve.”