Non-Profit Global Industry Association Enables Collaboration Amongst Industry Leaders to Define Best Practices for DevOps Transformation, End-to-End Network Management and Operations & Procurement Readiness
TM FORUM LIVE! DIGITAL DISRUPTION, SAN JOSE, CALIF. — Dec. 09, 2014: Building on its members’ collective genius, TM Forum today announces a suite of 20 new best practices and proposed standards for successful management of network functions virtualization (NFV) and digital services. This follows global collaboration between market leaders over the past four months, including AT&T, Sprint, NTT, Orange, Turkcell, Huawei, Ciena, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Oracle, HP, Cisco and dozens of other leading enterprises within the Forum’s Zero-touch Orchestration, Operations and Management (ZOOM) project, which aims to create the blueprint for the end-to-end orchestration and management of virtualized services.
The TM Forum ZOOM project aims to create a living blueprint for a new generation of service provider support systems in order to deliver on the promise of digital agility and to provide the market with expert guidance on how to navigate the complex journey to get there. The project is split into three core themes:
- The DevOps Transformation Framework sets a clear vision for how to transform from a traditional SysOps/NetOps development approach to an agile DevOps approach, dramatically reducing time-to-market for new services and innovations, and making it possible for service providers to more effectively compete in the digital world.
- The Blueprint for End-to-End Management defines the essential requirements for effective management of physical and virtualized services, end-to-end, across multiple provider environments. The Blueprint identifies common practices and the required architectural and integration principles for holistic hybrid services management.
- The NFV Operations and Procurement Readiness guide identifies the key factors – including technical, business, organizational and cultural changes – necessary for service providers to source agile services in a hybrid environment. These guidelines also describe how to adhere to these requirements throughout the full sourcing lifecycle to help service providers meet the NFV promise of service agility as well as well OpEx and CapEx reductions.
“While NFV is a key piece of the agility puzzle for service providers, you can’t look at it in isolation,” said Nik Willetts, chief digital officer, TM Forum. “NFV creates the opportunity to revolutionize how we create, deliver and manage services, but, in order to succeed, they will need to overhaul their operations and business support systems, as well as how they think about operations. ZOOM brings together many of the industry’s leading innovators to create best practices and frameworks to guide this transformation, complementing the work of standards bodies such as ETSI.”
“The ZOOM community has grown at an incredible pace, bringing together more than 100 companies and 1,000 professionals, all with a stake in the NFV/SDN space,” said Carl Piva, VP strategic programs, TM Forum. “Over the last four months, we’ve used our agile collaborative model to produce more than 20 deliverables for the three major themes. Going forward, we plan to work even more closely with other industry groups and continue to accelerate this essential industry transformation.”
Today’s ZOOM release, included in the Forum’s latest Frameworx 14.5 suite of best practices and standards, includes:
- Three new Extra Insights reports, giving a succinct overview and guidance to the Forum’s latest work:
- NFV – CAN IT BE MANAGED? (Blueprint for end-to-end Management)
- NFV – ARE YOU PREPARED? (Operations and Procurement Readiness)
- NFV – WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE AGILE? (DevOps Transformation Framework for the Digital Ecosystem)
- A set of real-world user stories from service providers, addressing the full lifecycle of virtualized services from multiple actor/user perspectives, operations, procurement and development.
- A major contribution to ETSI NFV ISG, outlining the Forum’s interfaces and an analysis of how they can be used to support various interface requirements from MANO, along with an ETSI gap analysis.
- A step-by-step review of the full NFV sourcing lifecycle, identifying areas where procurement and operations practices may need to change in order to exploit the potential for NFV agility and lowered operations costs.
- An extension of TM Forum’s Information Framework to address virtualization and cater to the hybrid management challenges faced by service providers today.
- A snapshot of the shared information model needed for effective end-to-end network management and agile service composition, inspired by the Forum’s first NFV Catalyst projects (delivered in June 2014).
- A policy-based architecture with key components and concepts that cater to the dynamic relationships between networks and services, zero-touch, adaptive automation, customer-centric services and innovation in the marketplace.
- Initial analysis of the impact of end-to-end SLA management in a fully software-defined and virtualized environment (i.e., Cloud-SDN-NFV).
- A first cut of requirements for the security fabric needed to support virtualized services.
An overview of key changes required in operations, technical capabilities based on reusable modules, technical methods and support for hybrid operations. This overview also introduces the concept of the Management Control Continuum (MCC).
TM Forum’s ZOOM efforts are on display this week at TM Forum Live! Digital Disruption 2014, taking place at the San Jose Convention Center in San Jose, California. Forum members will be showcasing their innovative approaches, proof of concept projects and technical solutions via the Catalyst Program, including:
- Preparing NFV for Primetime featuring Orange, Sprint, Huawei, and EnterpriseWeb
- Closing the Loop: Scaling, Healing, and Optimizing a Virtualized Network featuring Telecom Italia, China Unicom, AT&T, Teoco, CanGo Networks, Wipro, and NetCracker
- Maximizing Profitability with NFV Orchestration featuring AT&T, Microsoft, Ericsson, and JDSU
- Lifecycle Management for Multi-Cloud Networks featuring AT&T, Microsoft, SevOne, Cisco, and Ericsson
For those who cannot attend Digital Disruption, these Catalysts will be livestreamed on Thursday, December 11 starting at 8:30 AM PST / 11:30 AM EST / 4:30 PM GMT. The livestream will continue throughout the morning with multiple 30-minute Catalyst demos, each of which will be followed by live Q&A. Interested parties can register for the livestream here.
TM Forum’s ZOOM project is one of many cross-industry collaboration programs that the Forum facilitates to help its member companies successfully establish and maintain a competitive position as a successful digital business. With more than 100 companies participating in the ZOOM collaboration community, the Forum is providing the industry with much-needed actionable guidance in the form of best practice guides, information models, checklists, blueprints and specific Frameworx enhancements.
To engage with TM Forum’s ZOOM program, and to download the new Extra Insights reports, please visit www.tmforum.org/zoom.
About TM Forum
TM Forum is a global industry association that helps its members transform and succeed in the digital economy. The collective experience and interests of our member community, comprised of more than 85,000 experts from 950+ global enterprises, service providers and technology suppliers, drives everything we do, from thought-provoking research and publications, to practical guidance, tools and best practices, hands-on events and training for business and IT leaders.
Through three key programs – Agile Business and IT, Open Digital Ecosystem and Customer Engagement – we provide a unique platform for our members to connect and collaborate with individuals and groups from around the world to solve key challenges and rapidly innovate to deliver new services, improve business agility, partner for success, reduce cost and risk, and enhance customer value and loyalty. To learn more about TM Forum and join our digital journey as a valued member and collaborator, please visit www.tmforum.org.
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