TM Forum’s Catalyst program has grown by over 50 percent in the last year, with a total of 46 projects showcased at the Forum’s major events during 2016. They have involved more than 100 member companies and hundreds of individual members: Catalyst projects are proven to produce results between three and five times faster than traditional R&D projects within single companies. They also cost significantly less and produce more rounded and robust solutions.

At TM Forum Live! Asia in Singapore this week, there were ten Catalyst demonstrations. A judging panel comprising Jenny Huang, Lead of OSS/BSS Standards Strategy Group, AT&T David Pleasance, Chairman, TM Forum; Michael Lawrey, Board Member, TM Forum; and Nik Willetts, Deputy CEO, TM Forum, chose three winning projects from them in the following categories:

Best In Show Catalyst

Cognitive Digital Agent was the winner. It was championed by Globe Telecom with participants Amdocs, Huawei and Infosys.

Nik Willetts commented, “This winner showcased the business outcomes exceptionally well, and the inventive use of machine learning and AI. This Catalyst has the potential to reduce costs by between 10 and 40 percent, and Globe intends to implement it over the coming months.”

Find out more about this project here and in the video interview below.

Best Use of TM Forum Assets

This was awarded to the APPEX Omnichannel, which was championed by Vodafone, with participants Apptium, ESRI and Huawei. David Pleasance presented the award and said, “This Catalyst is an important measure for value creation and it demonstrated real-life applications and use of open APIs.”

Find out more about this project here and in the video interview below.

Biggest Contribution to TM Forum Assets

Enabling the Digital Services Marketplace with Onboarding Automation took the prize here, championed by AT&T, China Mobile, Orange and Verizon. The participants were Amdocs, Cloud Best Practices, EnterpriseWeb, Huawei, IBM and Oracle.

Presenting the award, Michael Lawrey said, “The Catalyst program is a pinnacle at every TM Forum event and the contribution back to the TM Forum assets is a critical part of the Catalyst program overall. This Catalyst has helped shape our ZOOM NFV program and is a major contribution to the Forum’s work.”

Find out more about this project here and in the video interview below.



The other innovative Catalyst projects showcased at TM Forum Live! Asia were:

• Joint Agile Delivery, championed by AT&T and Orange, with participants Cloud Best Practices Network, Huawei and IBM.


• Beyond sales – Hierarchical Capability Openness Platform for Better Ecosystem, championed by China Mobile with participants AsiaInfo, Beijing University of Posts & Telecommunications, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Huawei.


• New Business Models with Mobile Sponsored Data, championed by NTT and Orange, with participants CloudSense, Comptel, DataMi, Salesforce and Sigma.


• Experience Journey Shaping, championed by China Telecom, KDDI and Orange, with participants: Ericsson, Subex, Knowesis and John Moores University.


• Real Virtuality, championed by BT and NTT, with participants Hewlett Packard Enterprise, TechMahindra, TEOCO and TierOne.


• Ecosystem to Ecosystem Platform, championed by BT with participants Airtel, Axiata, Ericsson and IBM.


• Omnichannel Collaboration Experience Across Digital Business Journey, championed by, China Mobile, with participants Beijing BOCO, Huawei and Tsinghua University.

Rebecca Sendel, VP Catalysts & Services, TM Forum said, “The impact on innovation that is only achievable through this unique collaboration is astounding. The result of this collaboration has a real impact on the agility and efficiency of delivering new solutions to solve common industry challenges. As this phase draws to a close, we are very excited about the Catalyst program in 2017; we expect to see more than 30 projects demonstrated at TM Forum Live! In Nice. There is still time to get involved, make sure you submit your proposal by Monday December 12.”

Anyone who wants to know more should contact Rebecca direct via rsendel@tmforum.org