By: Susana Schwartz

TM Forum Focused on Multi-Cloud Service Delivery and End-to-End Management for All Stakeholders

A few years ago the “tele” in Telemanagement Forum’s namesake was removed, making it the “TM Forum,” and this was done for a reason. The reason being that “telcos” participating in a digital ecosystem could no longer constrict or limit themselves with rigid boundaries or definitions of what they are in the moment or will be in the future. It was an acknowledgement that the roles among different stakeholders will continue to rapidly change, sometimes positioning friends as competitors or foes as partners – or, in some cases, both. 

In that vein the TM Forum is working to make its flagship, Frameworx, a reference architecture for not only companies “core” to its membership—namely, telcos—but also any company with a fundamental business centered on “service delivery.” That means the network- and IT-centric approach of the past is giving way to a service-centric body of documents, models, specifications, and code intended to benefit all stakeholders in the digital value chain, whether they’re companies enabled by or working with CSPs in some way. That means MSOs, OTT players, app and content creators, mobile advertisers, and others are supposed to be able to derive value from Frameworx and all related Collaboration Programs and Initiatives.

A Closer Look at Frameworx v12

Frameworx version 12 is TM Forum’s reference architecture in which the standards known worldwide as NGOSS, eTOM, TAM, and SID converged and were improved with more than 800 new processes and 300 new mappings.

The difference between the work under the previous namesakes and the current Frameworx “umbrella” is the B2B and many-to-many relationship approach inherent in the work being done. Rather than continue with the bolt-on approach that once characterized standards such as NGOSS, eTOM, TAM, and SID; the current Frameworx transcends monetization of networks and strives more toward generating revenue by attaching services, or compositions of services from multiple provider domains, to networks.

For that reason Frameworx focuses on multi-cloud service delivery and end-to-end management. It respects the fact that no single service provider, no one telco has an OSS expansive and dynamic enough to manage all resources associated with different services. It also recognizes it is increasingly difficult to isolate problems that impact customers, taint brand images and trigger revenue losses. For that reason, Frameworx is evolving to help stakeholders create visibility, backward and forward, of how everything is working and who is responsible for each piece that ultimately impacts the customer experience.