TELEMANAGEMENT FORUM WINS RECOMMENDATION FOR ETOM

The TeleManagement Forum and the standardization sector of the International Telecommunications Union announced from TeleManagement World this week that the ITU-T has formally approved the TMF's Enhanced Telecom Operations Map as an ITU-T recommendation.

Formal acceptance by the ITU-T validates the work of the TMF to the global telecom community and fills a gap within the international standards body for recommendations on business process frameworks for telecom providers.

The eTOM, according to Dave Sidor, chairman of ITU-T Study Group 4 and Nortel Networks representative, provides guidance to the world's network operators and service providers who are re-engineering their companies for next-generation networks.

The document describes all the enterprise processes required by a service provider and serves as a process blueprint. It also provides a neutral reference point for internal process re-engineering needs, partnerships, alliances and general working agreements.

“It is the first step an operator needs to take to improve its own productivity,” said Martin Creaner, chief technology officer for the TMF.

The eTOM is one of the TMF's most mature documents and was written with contributions from more than 35 TMF member companies. It was developed in 1995 as the TOM and evolved into eTOM in 2001. The TMF submitted the document to the ITU last October, and with its approval, the document is now known as eTOM version 4.0. The latest version defines the processes down to what Creaner called level 3 decomposition, one level of abstraction deeper than the previous version. At level 3, eTOM defines various sub processes such as data collection for performance management.

“It has been the unofficial industry standard for how service providers define the process they use to run their businesses,” Creaner said. “It already had informal global acceptance.”

However, with the ITU-T's stamp of approval, the TMF has moved from being a grand industry association of interested parties to almost an ITU assistant in terms of setting international standards for the industry, Creaner said.

The TMF expects the ITU-T recommendation to help reach every corner of the world over the next few months. “It is hugely important in Asia and other emerging markets where they are focused on only ITU-approved standards as opposed to de facto standards,” Creaner said.

While the ITU-T recommendation validates the work of the TMF, it may not lead to widespread adoption by the service provider community of the eTOM, or the TMF's New Generation Operations Systems and Support (NGOSS) initiative, said Scott Donahue, OSS program manager at Stratecast Partners.

“It won't change things dramatically because most people are already aware of the TMF and the eTOM, and many service providers are buying into their models,” Donahue said. “But it will change things subtly within service provider organizations by adding credibility to eTOM.”

The ITU's Sidor sees bigger changes for both the industry and the way these organizations will work together. “I believe it represents a significant change for both the TMF and [the ITU-T's] Study Group 4, one that recognizes the telecom industry cannot afford multiple standardized solutions to the same problem,” he said. “It is definitely consistent with the overall ITU-T initiatives to reach out to other organizations.”

The TMF also submitted two Human Machine Interface specifications to the ITU-T for recommendation and proposed a compendium of extant HMI specifications be created jointly. The ITU-T agreed, forming a Management Collaboration Focus Group to manage the work plan.

“This specification looks at standardizing the development of the ergonomic aspects of OSS applications. It's something operators across the world cry out for,” Creaner said.