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Collaboration among TM Forum members accelerates change in 2021

Explore the results TM Forum members are realizing by participating in projects focusing on IT architecture, Open APIs and partnering.

Joanne TaaffeJoanne Taaffe
16 Dec 2021
Collaboration among TM Forum members accelerates change in 2021

Collaboration among TM Forum members accelerates change in 2021

During 2021, TM Forum members achieved impressive results across many areas of collaboration. The accomplishments demonstrate ongoing success in accelerating innovation to solve our industry’s challenges and create the open, agile systems that enable new business models and partnerships. Growing strategic impact of Open Digital Architecture (ODA)

2021 saw considerable growth in adoption of Open Digital Architecture (ODA), our industry blueprint for modular, cloud-based, open digital platforms and Open APIs.

As we went into December more than 60 members, including many communications service providers (CSPs), had already signed the Open Digital Architecture (ODA) manifesto. By doing so, they have committed to helping build and adopt cloud native ODA standards. It also means ODA compliance is

increasingly appearing as a preferred requirement in relevant RFPs.

At the same time, more than 30 organizations certified in excess of 240 Open APIs in 2021, with Jio becoming the first service provider to reach Open API platinum conformance certification status. Find out which members are leading the way on the Open API certification leader board.

Our members also received the first ODA component specifications and prototype test kits for validating the interoperability of commercial software products. Currently we are scaling up to create detailed specifications for 60+ ODA software components.

Going beyond connectivity; forging new partnerships

An important part of our work involves reducing the obstacles and sources of friction that prevent members from innovating rapidly and delivering new services and business models efficiently. With this in mind, our members made important steps towards enabling the automated management of partners with

the creation of a Zero Touch Partnering Toolkit and the publication of a connectivity-as-a-service vision white paper , as well as a software marketplace strategy.

We also strengthened our work on helping communication service providers (CSPs) use multi-access edge computing to create new business opportunities through a strategic partnership with Bridge Alliance.

Real-life testing of new services and business models

Catalysts are where members from around the world get together to work rapidly on solving real business and technology problems using standards, best practices and each other’s insights and know-how.

Members from 152 companies, many of them CSPs, overcame travel restrictions to collaborate on the 41 new Catalyst projects that we showcased during DTWS.

Read our proofs of concept to find out more our members' great work, as well as our 2021 Catalyst award winners. These include the People’s Choice Award winner AI empowers 5G intelligent operations – Phase II, as well as Telco data space, which won the Best Innovation award. Or find out how you can get involved.

“Throughout the past 18 months, the tech communications industry has mastered the challenge to keep the world connected. This meant to overcome a multitude of obstacles to ensure success for customers. We were extremely impressed by the incredible standard of the demonstrations and true innovation throughout the Catalyst projects this year as we reviewed the creativity of the teams in developing solutions to evolve our industry,” - Steffen Roehn, Chairman of TM Forum

Sharing knowledge

Our research and media team undertook in-depth industry research to create 32 new research reports and 60 interactive webinars on key topics to give members the data and insights they need to inform business and technology decisions. Some of the highlights include our benchmark reports Mapping a path to revenue growth and Digital transformation Tracker 5.

Sign up to the Inform newsletter to receive news of our latest research.

We also created 25 new member case studies, including: 

  • Rakuten reduce customer onboarding from two hours to five minutes 
  • Telenor and Nokia use Open APIs to set up network slices for B2B2X  
  • Bell Canada improves fraud detection delays by 200% in Catalyst with Amdocs. “The quality of [TM Forum’s reports] is outstanding and has helped to push my understanding. TM Forum's Inform is my ‘go to' for the latest research and is quite frankly, a lifesaver! ​”- David Gale​, Enterprise Solution Architect (Resource Management) Systems Architecture CoE .

Attracting talent

During 2021 TM Forum launched a major initiative to drive greater diversity, equality and inclusion (DE&I) in the communications industry, with the creation of a new Inclusion and Diversity Score (IDS).

TM Forum members, Accedian, Bain & Company, Colt, Rostelecom and Telia Company took part in the successful completion of an alpha trial of the IDS with the aim of releasing the new benchmarking tool next year.

“CEOs like myself agree that talent is one of our many concerns as the digital economy grows, and the same skills are required across multiple industries. This is why we must put inclusion and diversity at the center of our strategy to be able to attract and develop the most critical element to our success – our people.” - Keri Gilder, CEO, Colt, Chair of TM Forum Inclusion & Diversity Council.

Training + Accreditation 

Our portfolio of training, certification and services to upskill your people and validate your products

remains a very popular feature of TM Forum membership, with companies around the world using it to equip their teams with the skills they need to excel in a rapidly transforming industry.

In total 12,195 member professionals trained from 278 companies.

"Looking at digital transformation, we understood that training and upskilling was a most important element of our journey. TM Forum was a partner to help us learn how to use the APIs and the fundamental technology behind them so that he could adopt them faster. With the fast pace of change in the industry, learning new technologies and having learning as a part of your DNA is critical." - Don Anton Roshan  Dehipitiarachchi, DMTS (Enterprise Architect), Verizon Wireless .

DTWS

“DTWS is an essential global platform where we can share powerful ideas, diverse perspectives and collectively inspire action."- Koen Vermeulen, Group CIO & SVP, Orange

Digital Transformation World Series 2021 brought together more than 8,000 live attendees and 13,058 attendees in total from 136 countries to explore how collaboration can inspire change and help solve some of our greatest challenges. Over 11,000 attendees came from CSPs to listen to debates and presentations from experts around the world, including 75 CxOs. You can still watch some of the highlights including:

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