Pipeline Publishing, Volume 4, Issue 5

Pipeline Publishing, Volume 4, Issue 8

	This Month's Issue:
	Serving Up Service Delivery

Service Delivery Frameworks:
The Service Provider's Mashup

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Tony Richardson, TMF Staff Team Liaison:

“My opinion – [the SDF is] crucial [for the TMF current media convergence strategic direction.] The SDF and associated SDPs will be the means by which such future service offerings will be blended with more traditional and future services.

“In all, the work in the second–half of 2007 has provided a firm foundation to build Phase II of the SDF program – which will be defining the detailed requirements for SDF management specifications etc.”

SDF is a Big Job, and it is not happening soon. Without capital-C$ Commitment it will never happen. All the players agree that SDF needs significant assignment of resources both in house, and in organizations like the TMF’s SDF team. Inside the TMF, SDF needs more attention of the Board and greater allocation of staff resources – commensurate to the extensive scope of the program. It needs to speed up the timeline for delivery of usable specifications. We cannot let the program get bogged down in debates between those OSS/BSS vendors who wish to block it and the infrastructure vendors and System Integrators who want it. This type of sniping and obstructionism slowed delivery of NGOSS by perhaps two years. If we allow this now, than those who dominate the status quo will continue to win contracts – but can service providers afford this outcome? The best news is a very large quantity of companies in the extended telecom/media ecosystem can get a piece of this pie by simply supplying either an enabler or a tool – or the currently rare human expertise necessary to architect and build these complex environments. If this extended ecosystem realizes the potential of SDF and then gets organized - it significantly broadens the coalition for SDF.

For Phase II, Telecom Italia has seconded Enrico Ronco, a TMF Fellow and major TMF contributor, to be the team lead and spearhead new progress toward deliverables. Everyone acknowledges this is a big job.

Ronco knows this: “TMF is developing requirements at the moment. [While] there has been a big amount of work since [summer 2007] …, personally, I think that at least 18 months at least will be necessary to see some concrete implementations of TMF SDF results – so Q3-Q4 09 (starting from mid 08).”

It has taken seven years for NGOSS to move from introduction to its current state - where Service Providers and vendors can design with the same expectations and common language and build NGOSS management structures that are interoperable. With a concept inception in the Landscape Team in August 2006, we are now 18 months into the TMF’s involvement with SDF. With Over-the-Top services [see December 2006 Pipeline] barreling down upon Service Providers, we believe network operating service providers cannot survive for five more years waiting on usable specifications for SDF, or for products which implement these.

The current TMF administration staff has placed strong project management on the TMF program with clear charters, reasonable work plans, and fixed deliverables. Just like a good NPI program should do – Specifications and Interoperable Agreements are the TMF’s products. Yet with a potential “Sword of Damocles” hanging over operators (OTT services and Web 2.0 companies aggressively entering their market), this “best practice” NPI may not be good enough anymore. Therefore some fundamental speed up in the way the TMF manages program deliverables must occur. Again we see a requirement for what we are calling “TMF 2.0.” But a good first step is to remove any “boat anchors” from the teams.

Lastly, while Keith Willetts, with SDF, is getting his full vision of Service Management, nevertheless, Alan Quayle believes this just is not enough. SDF must also encompass the delivery of enhanced customer experience while increasing the pool of possible customers and suppliers in our now much larger ecosystem. It is hard for anyone to disagree with this.

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