As the consumer and commercial worlds embrace all things digital, the complexity of integrating and managing digital services is only growing. New services are created every day through a complex value chain of partners. This results in growing challenges in delivering customer satisfaction and long-term success with new requirements for end-to-end manageability, security, scalability, and efficiency. With over 20-50 billion devices connecting online in the next five years, the Internet of Things (IoT) transformation is the next great ICT disruptive event that will change both social norms and how business is conducted in a new technology framework.

Technology and services revenue connected to the burgeoning “Internet of Things” (IoT) marketplace will grow at an 8.8% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2012-2017 – increasing from $4.8 trillion to $7.3 trillion – according to a February 2014 report from IDC.

“The Internet of Things market must be understood in terms of vertical markets because the value of IoT is based on individual use cases across all markets,” elaborated IDC Global Technology and Industry Research Organization senior analyst Scott Tiazkun. “Successful sales and marketing efforts by vendors will be based on understanding the most lucrative verticals that offer current growth and future potential and then creating solutions for specific use cases that address industry-specific business processes.”

TM Forum provides the global reach, business, technology, and market value required by the IoT opportunity by engaging both targeted verticals and an open digital economy that provides existing members and new members with a competitive advantage in scalable best management practices, APIs, and standards.

Objectives

This program significantly advances the application of Frameworx and TM Forum’s Open Digital Ecosystem Program work by facilitating collaboration for IoT transformation with other standards bodies, Industry groups, and key stakeholders .

The Internet of Things is being rolled out in vertical market sectors (such as Digital Health, Smart City, Smart Energy) as well as cross industry “horizontal”, scalable deployments. Given the goals of scalable, secure, successful eco-systems of connected things, a common language is becoming increasingly important. From sensors to M2M to data management to security to API’s and applications, the management of the Internet of Things will require a common way of addressing these complex and dynamic solutions.

The cross industry work stream will address such value assets such as accelerator tool kits, and how cross industry deployments can leverage a Common Language and repeatable patterns. Business management as well as technology management will be discussed with a focus on :

• Business Models: IoT business models will be innovative and include the orchestration of many business models across layers of operational components.
• Partnerships: Connected digital services will require the orchestration of partnerships to deliver scalable solutions.
• Security & Privacy: A critical component that receives headlines everyday, but is challenging to manage
• Standardization: In order to scale effectively, IoT cross industry initiatives must integrate both vertical industry standards and establish cross industry standards.
• Innovation Apps: With a long tail of IoT Cross industry applications, an approach to managing the innovation cycle at an enterprise to enterprise level is required.
• Big Data & Analytics: With billions of devices generating data, a cross industry language and management best practices is key to exploiting the value of the data with in a common language and architecture.