TELEMANAGEMENT 2.0

TeleManagement World is not called Supercomm for a reason. As tradeshows go, the biannual OSS fest is as unassuming as its name and the name of its host, the TeleManagement Forum. TMW is not a global extravaganza. Global it may be, but an extravaganza? Hardly.

Nor is TeleManagement World a show for everyone. It's exclusive in the way chess clubs are exclusive. But most of all it is still profitable, say show organizers. And relevant, say its members. To continue being both in the tumultuous world of telecom, the show must continue to evolve, as must the forum itself.

Although its shows are hosted in Las Vegas in the fall and Nice, France, in the spring, TMF remains focused on business and leaves the extravagances of such hotspots to others. Inside its convention halls, members have gotten serious about coping with their new reality, or more accurately, their reality newly realized.

But the shows are just a means to an end — a revenue source for a forum that is trying to become the de facto repository of technical information for the entire OSS industry, not just the network management piece it's famous for.

Today, the TMF is all about business, from trying to secure its own to defining business processes through the enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM). That effort also includes tying those processes to back office solutions through its New Generation Operations Systems and Software (NGOSS) framework and other sets of process guidelines.

The TMF will use the show in Las Vegas this week to attempt to assume its position as the recognized leader in operational management and OSS. “There has been a huge amount of progress, notwithstanding the state of the industry, on firming up and providing a clear definition of NGOSS over the last nine months,” said Martin Creaner, chief technical officer of the TeleManagement Forum.

It will be up to attendees at this week's show to determine the importance and utility of that progress.

More than one analyst has said the TMF is one of the most political organizations they have ever seen and that politics sometimes obstructs the industry's rightful interests. However, that doesn't make the forum unique, particularly as a body composed of companies with competing technical interests of their own. But Karl Whitelock, OSS program manager for Stratecast Partners, said the industry can hardly do without it.

“We have operational challenges up the ying-yang in this industry,” Whitelock said. “If we don't have somebody like the TMF that is trying to provide some direction, we are absolutely hosed.”

But despite the economy, don't look for TMF to disappear. The forum is feeling the pain of its members, but is still very healthy, Creaner said. “There has been some fall-off anecdotally, but overall we have avoided anything that would cause major alarm or concern.”

Membership has fallen from its peak of approximately 380 companies to about 340, including the notable departure of WorldCom. The loss of membership dues, which are the forum's primary source of revenue, has prompted the organization to consider other sources.

A more immediate concern would seem to be the loss of continuity within the technical work groups, committees and ongoing proof-of-concept projects known as the Catalyst projects. However, that doesn't appear to be the case.

First, one must put WorldCom in perspective. “WorldCom was a strong member in terms of participation, so it is a shame to lose a company like that, but for every problem this presents to the TMF, there are a thousand suppliers who feel more pain than us,” Creaner said.

Then there is an axiom that has been tested a few hundred thousand times in the last two years by companies feeling that sort of pain and resorting to layoffs: No one is irreplaceable. Creaner said the axiom appears to be true. “I have seen key individuals drop out and have seen new excellent individuals come in and pick up the banner,” he said.

Whitelock agreed. “Stagnation can definitely be an issue,” he said. “You could argue that the whole telecom industry is in a state of stagnation.”

The folks at TMF believe that the framework and guidelines it provides can be instrumental in churning telecom's stagnant waters and getting the industry flowing again. At a time when companies are setting their 2003 budgets and re-examining the efficacy of often-expensive industry forum participation, the TMF may have to do a better job of proving it.

“Sometimes their frameworks don't necessarily apply to the way operators are trying to deliver services, especially when there are elements and components involved that sit outside their network,” said Malcolm Lewis, director for the mobile industry at CSG Systems. “And from a mobile perspective, a lot of the things we will see in 3G are outside the network operator's scope.”

In its recently released strategic plan for 2003 to 2005, the TMF identified as one of its goals the need to improve its technical credibility on packet- and mobile-oriented networking.

Lewis added that the TMF's Catalyst projects are an ideal place to address these issues. “The Catalyst projects really fill a role in providing a proof-of-concept for dealing with things outside the telecom space,” he said.

For example, in its latest Catalyst project, CSG and its partners succeeded in proving the concept of billing for quality-of-service and revenue settlement between two IP networks.

Proving concepts has been one of the TMF's strengths, Whitelock said, “but nobody on the planet believes you can take an NGOSS Catalyst project as defined and implement it in someone's network.”

That is why another of the TMF's missions is to add some concrete to its Catalyst. “We have refocused the Catalyst program over the last few months to turn it into something that yields more short-term benefits for service providers,” Creaner said.

The forum released what Creaner calls the first stable version of eTOM in May and has Release 4 planned for the fourth quarter. “It is a solid document now and provides a full decomposition of all areas of the operations map,” Creaner said. New releases of other forum documents will be revealed in Las Vegas this week.

Increasing service provider involvement is another focus area for the forum, particularly by those in North America. Creaner said service provider participation is not really a problem and offered their sponsorship of most Catalyst projects as proof. Still, he admitted that for an organization begun predominantly by service providers, their participation may have slipped a little. “Today we are at about 30% participation. We would like to drive that to about 40%,” Creaner said.

Despite any perceived dearth of participation by service providers, the forum and its service provider brethren appear to be on the same page, at least conceptually.

BellSouth is currently evaluating responses to a recent request for proposal regarding its next generation network and OSS. While admitting an arms-length relationship with the TMF, often working more indirectly through vendor members, BellSouth's methodology for evaluating systems sounds eerily like an advertisement for the NGOSS framework.

“There are enough changes going on in the evolution of services and capabilities that finding an adaptable, open framework that can respond is our top criteria,” said Hank Kafka, chief architect of Network and Information Technology at BellSouth.

Because nobody could agree two years ago on how a next generation network was going to look, the TMF developed NGOSS as just such a framework — one that could adapt to any technical curve in the road while maintaining the principles and best practices of the industry. One that could support, as Kafka said, “whatever service or capability showed up and became most urgent.”

Also sounding very NGOSS-ish was BellSouth's requirement that across the whole continuum of technologies it plans to offer — such as gigabit Ethernet and network-based virtual private networking — vendors must have open, extensible interfaces. Unfortunate for most of the vendors is that it doesn't need them right away. It just needs the framework.

“We don't need it all today because we are not deploying all those technologies in an integrated manner yet,” Kafka said. “Besides, big bang solutions often end in an explosion rather then a successful big bang.”

The TMF also said it wanted to reach out to billing and customer care providers to re-enforce its coverage of business support systems (BSSs). That is a welcome expansion of scope for companies like CSG. “The TMF is a great way to show the relationship between OSS and BSS. It adds a huge amount of value to what we are doing,” Lewis said.

Creaner said the TMF has made significant inroads in the billing community over the last three to four years but still sees room for improvement.

Perhaps the biggest area of improvement could be in communicating those inroads and others to the community at large. “TMF has made significant progress,” Whitelock said. “eTOM has really opened people's eyes and helped them see the value in generically defining internal processes.”

So what's the problem? Whitelock said that with all the work the forum has done, with eTOM in particular, “They haven't done a very good job of educating the general telecom market.”

Creaner offered an explanation: “If you jump up and blow your trumpet on these things too early, it can hurt when people find out they're not available. Well, they are available now.”

Their usefulness and importance to vendors and service providers in the months ahead may determine the long-term relevance of the TeleManagement Forum as it struggles with a conundrum facing similar organizations.

“The most relevant organizations in tough times are the ones that solve the three-month, short-term problems,” Creaner said. “And yet, a forum like TMF has to spread its focus across the very short-term problems, as well as medium-term problems, because those are going to be there even when the tough times are over. NGOSS has some short-term benefits, but it is certainly a medium-term investment.”