TM Forum ODA wins CIO 100 Award for IT innovation

TM Forum members’ collaboration on the Open Digital Architecture Component accelerator (ODA CA) has won a CIO 100 award 2022 for business technology innovation.

The annual US CIO 100 Awards, organized by CIO online magazine, recognize organizations that are using IT in innovative ways to deliver business value – whether by creating competitive advantage, optimizing business processes, enabling growth, or improving relationships with customers. TM Forum’s ODA-CA project was launched in December 2020, to help communications service providers (CSPs) deploy agile, cloud native software-based networks, speed up innovation, and monetize 5G.

George Glass, TM Forum CTO says: “ODA provides the code, frameworks, patterns and transformation guides that enable our members to build an architect that delivers business agility and cost transformation, and creates the platform to support their aspirations to grow their business in new markets.”

ODA-compliant components are interoperable building blocks of software. They run service provider businesses, enabling the industry to invest in IT for new and differentiated services, instead of maintaining customized legacy code and interfaces. The project underpins TM Forum’s continuing drive to create practical, machine-readable assets for its members.

TM Forum members including Accenture, Axiata Digital Labs, Global Wavenet, Globetom, Oracle Communications, Orange, SigScale, Sysbiz Technologies, Vodafone and Whale Cloud began collaboration in 2020 to build a test platform for the ODA. The test platform is a significant step toward TM Forum’s goal of developing a new software model and market.

“This is a testament to the teamwork and collaboration of TM Forum’s members from around the world, who have shared their knowledge and expertise to help us deliver our cloud native, AI ready, API enabled digital architecture. Congratulations to everyone involved,” says Glass.

“This year’s CIO 100 class demonstrates grit, innovation, and deep teamwork. Many projects are related to streamlining data flows and insights to drive the business,” according to Anne McCrory, the Group VP of CIO 100.