TM Forum, IPsphere Unite To Ignite Rapid Service Delivery

End result will be a pre-commercial testbed for pilot program testing and the demonstration of multi-vendor interoperability.

IPsphere has joined TM Forum to fuse best practices, standards and guidelines that relate to automated deployment of IP-based information, communications and entertainment services. The IPsphere framework complements work underway within TM Forum's ever-expanding Service Delivery Framework.

Using the principles of a service-oriented architecture (SOA), the IPsphere Framework defines a sophisticated business layer that automates offer, purchase and provisioning of service components among multiple stakeholders. The framework also offers support for a standardized registration and discovery process, payments for resource usage and quality assurance, and interworking with session-based service environments.

Currently, the IPsphere Forum is phasing its work programs into TM Forum, and an evaluation of its synergies with the Service Delivery Framework is currently underway. The Service Delivery Framework is valuable to enabling control of service lifecycle management across all execution environments, thus allowing flexibility in binding services with product catalogs.

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News & Views
 
OSS/J Trouble Ticket Bolsters SOA-Enablement

API X.790 and Web Service Extensions foster a common information model and common interface approach for Discovery, Inventory and Fault Management.

The TM Forum Interface program has announced a major enhancement of the OSS/J Trouble Ticket API—an established specification for exchanging information about malfunctions of networks and services.

New in this release are a Web Services Reference Implementation (RI) and Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK). The RI serves as an example of software code that guides interface developers on how to implement a Web Service for managing trouble tickets. The TCK allows OSS suppliers to certify products that provide out-of-the-box support for this interface. Web Services is just one of the technologies that can be used with OSS/J interfaces; other profiles include XML and Java.
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Catalyst Technology Showcase: The Technology Proving Ground
In order to help all stakeholders in the value chain manage the "Customer Experience," this year's Management World Orlando Catalyst Technology Showcase highlights collaborative projects that integrate frameworks, processes, interfaces and guidelines. The goal with each Catalyst is proof that TM Forum's Transformation Framework (NGOSS) artifacts create a foundation for building flexible, scalable OSS/BSS.
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ITIL and eTOM: Unification of Business and IT Communities

Work is currently underway to combine ITIL good practice services and Business Process Framework (eTOM) process flows.
 
In order to eliminate redundancies in provisioning and other OSS systems that knock engineers and business people out of alignment, TM Forum and the itSMF (IT Service Management Forum) are incorporating ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) into the Business Process Framework (eTOM). Both teams are working to find areas of replication in stovepipes, and to ultimately create a template of processes oriented to both the IT and business communities. Actual integration of artifacts is now underway.
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Check It Out!
 
Policy-Based Communications Management Workshop
 
Monday, November 17th, 13:00 – 17:00 EST

The Defense Interest Group is hosting a meeting and workshop at Management World Orlando. Not only is this workshop a “working” session, but it will boast several Defense Industry experts, who will talk about key objectives and outputs that will advance knowledge around policy-based communications. There is limited seating, and registration is required. Please contact Christy Coffey, ccoffey@tmforum.org, to register for the workshop.

TM Forum Interface Program Web Session

Learn more about the OSS/J Trouble Ticket API enhancements on Oct. 23, 2008. A session will be presented by Roman Schlegel of FROX and Christian Klaus of Ascom, both of which were major contributors to the project. Click here to register for these sessions.
 
ITU-T Makes Recommendation for Information Framework (SID)
 
Last month, the ITU-T made a recommendation for TM Forum's Information Framework (SID), further validating the need for a common model to harmonize information and data models.

Led by Dave Sidor of Nortel and Knut Johannessen of Telenor, the ITU-T Recommendation M.3190 encompasses the “Product” and “Service” domains, “Business View Concepts,” “Principles,” and Information Framework “Primer” addenda in The Information Framework v 7.5. These elements of Recommendation M.3190 will serve as an introduction to the Information Framework “Analysis Model,” which will cover all of the information required to implement use cases based on the Business Process Framework (eTOM).

“The recommendation by the ITU-T of the TM Forum Information Framework validates its strength as a means of representing information requirements specific to different areas of Service Providers’ businesses,” says TM Forum President Martin Creaner.

Future submissions to the ITU-T will include other SID domains. The Information Framework team—led by Josh Salomon of Amdocs; subject matter expert John Reilly; John Wilmes of Progress Software and Telcordia's Paul Levine (ret.)— will continue work to ensure the SID analysis model remains implementation-independent.