“The TM Forum has been calling for industry collaboration in this area for some time, and we strongly support the Wholesale Applications Community and its goals,” said Keith Willetts, CEO and Chairman of the Board, TM Forum. “The majority of operators in the new Community are already active members of the Forum, and we plan to work closely with the new group to ensure its success.”
Many challenges exist in managing the underlying business process and data for ‘long tail’ content and applications, including digital fulfillment, customer care, revenue and settlements. The Forum, which delivers business-critical standards to address the complex IT challenges communications service providers face, has been leading pioneering work in the area of content distribution and service delivery management since 2007.
“It’s critical that operators move quickly to establish value in the app market, while avoiding the mistakes of the past,” commented Willetts. “In the past, we’ve seen the market take a siloed approach to developing and delivering applications, only to be faced with significant integration and scalability challenges. It’s important for operators to adopt a common approach going forward, and this will inevitably depend on them also aligning with a standard IT architecture. TM Forum delivers the IT architecture standards and best practices that enable this kind of agility and which will be a critical success factor for a wholesale applications environment.”
TM Forum plans to work closely with the Wholesale Applications Community to ensure its success by helping to address underlying IT challenges facing operators seeking to add and derive value from the applications market.