MORRISTOWN, NJ—Aug 4, 2010—The TM Forum today announced the launch of their Frameworx Conformance Certification program, enabling Service Providers and Suppliers to gain an independent assessment of their conformance to Frameworx, the communications industry’s only integrated business and IT architecture.
Service Providers procure standards-based products to reduce risk, increase speed of service deployment, and lower costs—critical needs brought on by market saturation, mobile data explosion, and financial pressures. They can now assess product conformance to industry-defined best practices and standards with:
• TM Forum Frameworx Implementation Conformance Certification that allows Service Providers to validate their organizational processes against TM Forum Frameworx standards and best practices and to use the results to identify areas of conformance and opportunities for improvement.
• Suppliers, vendors, and systems integrators can validate their own products against TM Forum Frameworx standards and best practices with the TM Forum Frameworx Product Conformance Certification. The results identify areas for improvement and determine the extent to which products are consistent with best-in-class standards.
Frameworx serves as a blueprint for a Service Provider’s entire operational back office, and is compatible with industry standards such as ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA). It defines standard process and information models required to run the business and the major systems that implement and automate those processes. It also defines the architectural rules for grouping systems into logical domains—such as enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management—and the standardized interfaces between those domains.
Service Providers can validate and improve the efficiency of their organization and its business processes by certifying their company’s adherence to TM Forum Business Process Framework’s (eTOM) best-in-class industry standards. Conformance Certification assessments enable Service Providers to:
• Gain an independent benchmark of product or implementation conformance to Frameworx. The conformance assessment report can act as a roadmap for further development to ensure the benefits of Frameworx are fully obtained.
• Reduce the cost, timeframe, and risk associated with the integration of a new product or service.
• Significantly reduce the cost of the handling the RFx process, through the use of standard RFx templates and response mechanisms.
• Provide a common language and data definitions for defining business processes, which is key to providing improved customer response time and satisfaction.
Conformance Certification assessments enable Suppliers to provide an objective view of the product’s conformance that can be used to market and sell the product to the growing number of Service Providers demanding Frameworx conformance. By implementing Frameworx standards and best practices they can:
• Maximize the return on development investment.
• Drive down costs and risks by using proven industry standards rather than inventing solutions themselves.
• Reduce support costs by providing one standardized rather than numerous custom solutions.
• Ease integration with their customer’s business architecture.
Quotes:
“TM Forum’s Conformance Certification illustrates commitment to interoperability, and provides reassurance to customers seeking standards-based, and therefore, cost effective and flexible solutions. With TM Forum Frameworx becoming an increasingly prominent requirement of Service Providers for their operations and IT architecture, the ability to prove conformance to these standards will set Suppliers apart from their competition.” Keith Willetts, Chairman & CEO, TM Forum
“We encourage common industry approaches that help us build a vibrant market delivering innovative software at realistic prices. We welcome Frameworx, as it future-proofs investments as the market changes. We especially welcome the ability to build systems and processes tailored to our specific business needs using a common set of standard building blocks.” — Phil Dance, Managing Director, BT
“We are delighted that Tribold has been awarded TM Forum Information Framework (SID) conformance certification. We’re focused on delivering rapid returns and business benefit to our customers and adhering to the SID can only assist in this aim.” Catherine Michel, CTO and Founder, Tribold
“We chose to be an early adopter of the TM Forum’s standards conformance testing program. By taking the initiative to undergo formal testing, we hope to communicate to our service provider customers that we understand the importance of cost reduction and more agile business processes, and that we are willing to make a substantial up-front investment to help our customers to reach their goals.” Zarar Rana, CEO, ConceptWave
Key Facts:
• Frameworx Conformance Certification starts with a self-assessment governed by defined rules. The TM Forum then validates this assessment. The net result is a graduated scale that shows the level of adoption of TM Forum Frameworx and the gaps found during the assessment. TM Forum provides support from a panel of subject matter expert assessors to expedite the assessments. The company being assessed provides both coordination and technical contacts to support the assessment.
• Organizations and products that meet the rigorous standards set by the conformance tests are awarded a TM Forum Conformance Mark. The Conformance Mark can be used by marketing and sales to publicize the conformance of their processes or products to Frameworx and its widely supported industry standards.
• TM Forum Frameworx is the result of extensive collaboration by the Forum’s more than 700-strong corporate membership through TM Forum’s collaborative R&D programs. Frameworx has been widely adopted worldwide and has been built for the industry, by the industry.
• Frameworx drives business agility and re-use, essential in today’s market where service providers need to rapidly deliver new services and increase revenues in the face of changing value chains and markets, network rationalization, more demanding customers, and all IP technologies.
• Frameworx provides end-to-end service management by the integration of common business Processes, enterprise information and the applications into one unified solution.
• The Frameworx Service Oriented Architecture rationalizes the business and IT architecture across the supporting components to reduce and simplify operational processes and costs.
• Frameworx consists of Business Process (eTOM), Information (SID), Application (TAM), and Integration Frameworks.
• Frameworx is battle hardened—its core Frameworks are mature and are in use by Service Providers throughout the world. TM Forum members have published more than 200 case studies on implementation of Frameworx components.
Resources:
• Find conformant vendor solutions
• Learn how to participate in the Conformance Certification Program
• To learn more about Conformance Certification, contact Joan Huffine
• Take a Frameworx training course
• Visit the Frameworx web site at http://www.tmforum.org/Frameworx
• Participate in the Frameworx on-line communities
• Press and analysts desiring a briefing to learn more about Frameworx or Conformance Certification should contact Geoff Devlin
• Subscribe to TM Forum’s press release RSS feed and newsletters
Tags:
TM Forum, Frameworx, Conformance Certification Assessment, Solution Frameworks, Business Process Framework, eTOM, Information Framework, SID, Application Framework, TAM, Integration Framework
About TM Forum:
With more than 700 corporate members in 195 countries, TM Forum is the world’s leading industry association focused on enabling best-in-class IT for service providers in the communications, media and cloud service markets. The Forum provides business-critical industry standards and expertise to enable the creation, delivery and monetization of digital services.
TM Forum brings together the world’s largest communications, technology and media companies, providing an innovative, industry-leading approach to collaborative R&D, along with wide range of support services including benchmarking, training and certification. The Forum produces the renowned international Management World conference series, as well as thought-leading industry research and publications.
