TM Forum and World’s Largest Communications and IT Companies Take Major Leap to Ease Digital Services Delivery

TM Forum’s Open Digital Steering Group expands membership to include eleven of world’s largest communications, digital and IT companies; first of many intensive collaborative meetings brings leaders together to solve digital services challenges

Singapore — April 24, 2013: As the digital-based economy continues to grow and evolve rapidly, global industry body TM Forum announced that its newly formed Open Digital Steering Group has now expanded to include 11 of the world’s largest service and solution providers, including Accenture, China Mobile Communications Corp., France Telecom-Orange, Huawei, IBM, Microsoft Corp., Oracle, Telecom Italia, Telefónica Digital, Telstra and Vodafone. The group recently hosted an intensive session in London to set in motion an aggressive plan to deliver essential tools necessary for profitable digital service delivery.

TM Forum, the global industry association with over 900 member companies from across the digital services ecosystem, is focused on removing roadblocks to delivering and operating all types of digital services, and supporting a vibrant open digital economy. Its expanded steering group provides executive guidance and support, including strategic direction and consultation to help shape TM Forum’s Digital Services Initiative.

The steering group members also act as representatives for the initiative within their own company and the industry as a whole, encouraging broader engagement and support.

In London, TM Forum brought the group’s members and other industry leaders together for a rapid collaboration-style ‘Hot House’ meeting where 35 participants from more than 20 companies took part in intensive collaboration to solve some of the most pressing industry challenges related specifically to digital services delivery. Over two days, the group set in motion plans to deliver early versions of the following tools in time for TM Forum’s flagship conference and expo, Management World 2013 in Nice, France:

 A digital services reference architecture to enable the standardized design of the critical architectural elements for the enablement of digital services

 Outlines of critical Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) needed for the end to end management of key capabilities, such as identity, payment, balance checking, charging and billing and more

 Definitions of B2B2X business models and their impact on service provider IT and operations to facilitate building rapid partnerships in the digital ecosystem, both for communications and other types of digital service providers such as cloud, content and information providers

Based on the success of the first Hot House meeting, the Forum plans to expand its use of intensive collaborative process to solve other business and operational challenges in order to expedite their delivery, ultimately producing much quicker results for TM Forum’s members and the industry at large.

“As growth of the digital economy continue to accelerate, the Forum’s Digital Services Initiative is putting a stake in the ground to solve the challenges of a vibrant, open digital ecosystem, and giving our members the tools to thrive in the digital world,” said Nik Willetts, chief strategy officer, TM Forum.

“Based on the success of recent meetings, we plan to introduce a wide range of agile collaborative formats throughout the Forum’s R&D program to create a fast-paced development environment that can keep pace with the world’s largest digital services companies.”

Earlier this year TM Forum named former BT executive, Phil Dance, as chairman of the Open Digital Steering Group, responsible for guiding the group’s work, goals and output. Phil is a TM Forum Ambassador and one of its Distinguished Fellows. He is also a former member of TM Forum’s Board of Directors, and as chief information officer at BT he was a key player in the design and development of BT’s 21st Century Network.

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For additional information or to join TM Forum, please visit the Membership section of our Website or email memberservices@tmforum.org and a local representative will respond.