Management World Orlando reflects need for an ‘agile provider’

This week, TM Forum’s Management World event will be some of the same but with a new spin.

The forum’s expansion into “specialist streams” might have initially confused some people into thinking TM Forum is “straying” from its core competency, but in each of its “initiative” areas—whether cloud, cable, defense or others—it becomes obvious that “operations” remains the focus, just in new industries still in the embryonic phases of figuring out what telecom deciphered long ago. For example, the operations aspects of cloud are not yet standardized so that service taxonomy and billing can be established more rapidly.

The benefit of bringing other industries in to leverage the frameworks, interfaces and process flows already used by CSPs is that it encourages collaboration between communications companies and those with capabilities that fill the gaps in telecom—especially in areas of “new” or “emerging” computing paradigms that could make or break new business telco models.

In particular, Management World’s Forumville increasingly demonstrates the sort of “symbiosis” in terms of what CSPs have and what others covet, and vice versa. For instance, service providers have experience with operations and management systems, billing and customer-facing capabilities, SLAs and multi-partner management and settlement. Meanwhile, other companies have what CSPs want to improve as they move to offer new digital services, such as experience with creating and managing content, enhancing security, cloud, augmenting policy-based network management, analytics/BI and so on.

There’s a lot that competitors and potential partners can learn from one another. When looking at the metamorphosis of voice, data and video to dynamic, on-demand type services that must work over an expanding list of multi-purpose devices, it’s clear that the Forum’s vision is to help the “service provider” of the future, as opposed to any one vertical; ostensibly, recognizing there will be no such thing as a “cable company” or “telco” or “media company” in the future, but more an integrated provider of many things.

With attendance up to about 1,200, it’s obvious C-level executives and decision makers are taking note of the convergence, as 60 percent of registrants are senior decision makers and executives interested in how 320 companies from 49 countries are integrating, competing and innovating. And there will be 65 vendors participating in exhibits, sponsors and catalysts this time around.

As stated in the welcome by TM Forum President Martin Creaner, an “agile provider” is what is critical to future growth. “And being agile is about a lot more than cost reduction - it requires an ability to deliver truly customer-centric, innovative services quickly, working flexibly with a value-chain of partners,” according to Creaner.

To that end, TM Forum hopes that tomorrow’s launch of Management World will bring together buyers and sellers, as well as enable transformation to “agility” with collaborative “experiments” like those in Catalysts, as well as new guidebooks, technology roadmaps, training, research, publications, and online communities.

Connected Planet will keep its readers updated throughout the week on thought leadership coming out of the event.