SELF-PRESERVATION IS THE THEME AT TELEMANAGEMENT WORLD

Everybody had an agenda at last week's TeleManagement World in Las Vegas. Organizer TeleManagement Forum sought to ensure its own viability. New members and first-time exhibitors were out to make names for themselves. And those members who kept their booths locked in storage wanted to prove they were business-savvy by doing what Geoffrey Moore, chairman and founder of The Chasm Group, said is the only thing that matters: conserving cash.

The competing agendas made for a decent show despite the low turnout and tenuous health of some key and historic TMF contributors. And having an agenda is critical for companies who will survive, said TMF founder and chairman Keith Willetts.

“CEOs are beginning to understand they need to change the way they do business. There is a big upside to that, but you have to stay in business to reap it,” Willetts said.

The TMF board's vision for helping itself, its members and its members' customers stay in business included establishing compliance with its frameworks — such as new generation operations support systems (NGOSS) and telecom operations map (eTOM) — as a requirement in future requests for proposal. The forum also is planning to develop a toolkit for NGOSS and a set of implementation guidelines that will assist service providers in deploying proven, interoperable solutions.

“Our industry needs us now more than ever,” said Jim Warner, TMF president and CEO. “It is up to us to collectively shine the light and lead the industry forward.”

That light must shine across what Moore calls “the mother of all chasms,” which can only be crossed by cordoning off the legacy network and building an abstraction layer to separate it from the next generation. Moore encouraged solutions providers to focus on the most immediate issues of the business — rather than consumer — community because consumers are not prone to early adoption.

“You must target a compelling reason to buy. You need to look for a broken, mission-critical process that is losing money every day and needs to get fixed now,” Moore said.

Although OSS is a key ingredient for survival, Willetts cautioned that today's solutions still need work. “OSS is part of the solution” may sound like a great tagline, but it's only partly true — OSS is sometimes part of the problem, he said.

Eric Nelson, chief information officer at Netifice Communications, agreed: “OSS vendors and system integrators can be detrimental to your health.”

But it shouldn't have to be, said Edward Van Macatee, group vice president of global operations at Level 3 Communications. “Any schmuck can build a network, but that's not what creates value. The back office is the crown jewel of a corporation.”

To ensure that OSS is more preventative that symptomatic, the TMF said it would make the solutions that result from its Catalyst projects more “real” by better evaluating and recognizing NGOSS compliance. “Catalyst projects demonstrate that NGOSS concepts really work,” said Libbey Scheible, TMF's senior program support manager. “This will really promote commercial off-the-shelf plug-and-play products.”

Toronto-based Digital Fairway, the U.K.'s Staffware and Imagine OSS were among the new member companies putting some life into the show — and even touting customer contracts. Digital Fairway's approach is to know the customer's pain and focus on that rather than on the technology designed to ease that pain. “You can't suck and blow at the same time,” said Mark Flewelling, the company's vice president of product strategy.