| Thoughts from the Conference Chair |
 The TM Forum’s recent summit on Service Delivery and SDPs was very rewarding for all. Held in the Marriott at San Francisco’s airport (which is situated on a surprisingly attractive piece of waterfront property), it was highly interactive, information packed, collegial, and technically provocative.
The collection of speakers for this event – and the obvious effort they put into their presentations – was top notch. More than any event I’ve attended recently, this event stayed on track, avoided commercial drivel, and encouraged discussion of the real issues beyond the hype of SDPs, SDFs and the related technology.
The day’s tone was set early by our keynoters, with two wildly different, yet consistent, views: The first, from Qwest’s Don Tolland (interviewed by Deloitte’s Jeff LaFlamme), clearly established the pragmatic challenges and trade offs that are being faced by major service providers. The other, by Roberto Saracco of Telecom Italia Research, managed to challenge our assumptions by presenting disruptive technology and business trends that will make tomorrow’s business imperatives very different than today’s. Dr. Saracco also managed to be both relevant and, to me, fascinating without often mentioning SDPs directly.
One of his “megatrends” became the unofficial theme of the day: how Natural Selection and “Creative Destruction” would be the arbiters of success – not planning nor foresight of specific services. Dr. Saracco also defined a world in which real time transactions would offer far more commercial opportunity than the necessary evil of broadband service delivery. Panelists and speakers subsequently adopted and applied this concept to the innovation cycles that SDPs must support, to natural selection of services and even to natural selection of standards. Esoteric? Possibly, but I believe -- or maybe hope -- that everyone in the room understood the practical implications.
This summit differed from most other such events in that the Forum invited representatives from many “sister” industry initiatives and standards bodies, to present their related work, and participate in panels and general debate. We were fortunate to have outstanding contributors for this, including ITU-T’s Dr. Seungyun Lee, IP Sphere’s Mike Lerer, OMA’s Stephane Maes, IEEE’s Rick Townsend, OASIS’ James Bryce Clark, as well as the Forum’s own Dave Milham. This diverse panel quickly recognized how complementary its various work was, and began to lay out a patchwork (actually begun on paper by Dr. Lee) of how they fit together and occasionally overlapped. By viewing the development on SDPs from so many angles, we had a uniquely broad perspective on why this emerging field is so important to so many. This is a perspective you simply could not gain anywhere else, and we are all the richer for it.
We spent the balance of the day focused on practical implementations of SDP. The first group concentrating on current experiences in service delivery while the second grouping looked forward at tomorrow’s SDP/SDF architectural approaches. It was reassuring to watch what could be one-way presentations become highly interactive debates on the practicality of various approaches and even of the standards work so many of the participants are involved in.
The Summit almost never ended, as the assembled congress took control of the concluding “Power Debate” – in which most of the afternoon’s speakers fielded questions from the moderator (me) and the attendees. The fact that we delayed our departure to the open bar by a full hour was tribute to the quality of the interaction, and the interest of everyone involved.
I look forward to more interaction of this kind, and encourage the industry to participate in what promises to be a lively, important, and ultimately useful debate on the future technology and economics of service creation in our industry.
Grant Lenahan
Chairman, TMForum Service Delivery Summit, 2008
Strategist for Telcordia Technologies and
Co-Founder of TM Forum’s SDF program | |
| Testimonials |
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I have attended the TMF SDP and was very pleased with the sheer amount of information and knowledge that was exchanged with a great variety of colleagues from my industry. All this in a very relaxed and informal atmosphere.
Tayo Carvalhal, MUSCA Chief Architect, SDP, Ericsson |
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Very well planned and executed event. Being in a room with some of the industry’s brightest minds caused us all to raise our game a level. The presentations were relevant, timely and followed by very engaging debates that took us into the evening hours. From my perspective this was very much a give and take session with every participant benefiting and returning to work with new perspectives and ideas at our disposal. I look forward to the next round.
Don Toland, Chief Business Architect, Qwest |
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The stakes get higher every day for service providers to realize the vision of service delivery platforms to enable the rapid introduction of new and converged services without the cumbersome integration of years past. The SDP Summit provided an excellent forum to explore the opportunities and challenges in making the vision real. The collection of participants across the SDP value chain from researchers to technologists to service providers resulted in a healthy dialogue that undoubtedly will shape the future of service delivery platforms. Overall, the SDP Summit was a well executed event with many of the best and brightest minds on this topic globally.
Jeff LaFlamme, Director, Technology Integration Deloitte Consulting |
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