TMW REVIEW - Glittering prizes
Great changes are afoot in the telecoms industry – offering considerable potential to industry players, while current achievements deserve to be celebrated now. Lynd Morley looks back at TMW Nice
It was a year of ‘firsts’ for the TM Forum in Nice this Spring. The theme of the show, for instance, moved away, for the first time, from a purely telecoms focus to one that not only recognised, but actively embraced, the massive changes which are bringing communications, information and entertainment services together into a huge pot of convergence.
Commenting on these development, TM Forum President, Martin Creaner, noted: “The pace of change is such that it is becoming hard to define the ‘telecom’ industry any more, and it’s just as hard to define the cable or media industries either. I think we are truly witnessing the birth of a telecom/cable/media/web ecosystem.” Certainly the range of companies from these various industries attending the event – including Time-Warner, Virgin Media, UPC Broadband and Disney, in addition to the usual suspects from the telecom OSS/BSS world – underlined the expansion of the TM Forum’s remit, while the keynote speakers, including MIT Media Lab’s Nicholas Negroponte, discussing his One Laptop Per Child initiative, and Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy Group UK pointing to the changes in the advertising industry which are being brought about by online advertising, underlined the event’s breadth of vision.
The atmosphere of collaboration was also emphasised by the TM Forum’s own new collaborative ventures. Following the OSS through Java Initiative’s (OSS/J) decision in early 2006 to join with the TM Forum, the organisation’s determination to expand its scope and reach was further emphasised at TMW by the announcement that it would be merging with two more organisations – the Global Billing Association (GBA) and the Internet Protocol Detail Record Organisation (IPDR). Commenting on the announcement, Alex Leslie, GBA CEO, noted: “We seemed to be looking at the same kind of issues from different angles. Given that the BSS and OSS industries really need to converge, it makes enormous sense for us to work together.”
Collaboration was undoubtedly the ‘plat du jour’ in Nice where, among the many conference sessions – covering the six broad topics of Business Transformation, Convergence, Customer and Services, IT and Operations, Systems and Software, and Billing and Revenue Management – not to mention the many hospitality events and the two exhibition halls, senior executives from many of the world’s largest providers of telecom and cable services, network operators and content providers managed to get together to discuss how best to collaborate to drive down the integration tax.
Another ‘first’ this year, were the TM Forum Awards, presented at an evening ceremony – complete with formal dinner and attendees looking resplendent in black tie and evening dress. Steve Fratini of Telcordia was presented with the rarely conferred honour of distinguished fellow of the TM Forum, while BT was the first winner of an award noting exceptional contribution to the organisation. Given the youth of the awards, and the obvious delight of the recipients, here is a list of the winning companies:
Best practice award for a service provider – Korea Telecom
Best practice award for a supplier – Progress Software
Prosspero award for TM Forum standards adoption by a supplier – Hewlett-Packard
Prosspero award for TM Forum standards adoption by a service provider – BT
Best Catalyst for TM World 2007 – the Product and Services Assembly Project
Most innovative supplier – Highdeal
Best new OSS or BSS product – Arantech.
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