Unlocking Potential through agility, preserving profits through automation

Martin Creaner is president and CEO of TM Forum, a not for profit industry association with over 850 member companies, focused on simplifying the complexity of running a service provider’s business.

Martin Creaner is president and CEO of TM Forum, a not for profit industry association with over 850 member companies, focused on simplifying the complexity of running a service provider’s business. Here, as theindustry heads to Dublin, Ireland for TM Forum’s Management World 2012 Conference and Expo, to be held on 21-24 May, he tells VanillaPlus what to expect at the conference and how TM Forum is working to unlock the profit potential of the new value chain.
Martin Creaner
Martin Creaner president and CEO
of TM Forum

VanillaPlus: Please tell our audience a bit about TM Forum, and how TM Forum serves the communications industry.

Martin Creaner: TM Forum is the global, non-profit industry association that simplifies the complexity of running a service provider’s business especially as they embark on the new business challenges of digital markets. Along with our almost 900 members, TM Forum develops standards and best practices in the areas of service management. The most well-known among these standards is TM Forum’s Frameworx which essentially provides the underlying architectural blueprint of how to run efficient operations within the business environment of a CSP. The core of TM Forum is to deliver standards and best practices with our members that contribute to and create them. At any time, there are more than 600 member resources working on projects ranging from revenue assurance to service level management and agreements. Above and beyond standards, TM Forum delivers official Training and Certification, industry-leading conferences and publications, valuable research resources and benchmarking tools.

It’s really a matter of trying to open your mind and absorb as much input as possible from as many different people as you can.TM Forum’s membership has grown widely over the last six years and now comprises not just telecoms operators but a substantial membership from defence organisations, cable providers and other verticals within the entire digital services ecosystem. At the moment, TM Forum has projects looking at smart grid, e-payments and mobile payments, and I can see that developing to cover finance and healthcare. We’re working to make TM Forum the association of choice for solving critical service management issues the industry is going to encounter as it grows from 5 billion telephone users to 50 to 100 billion connected devices. That will necessitate low cost, automated management in order for the business to be profitable for anyone.

VP: I understand that TM Forum is responsible for bringing us the annual Management World Conference and Expo, which is now in its 13th year. Can you tell us a bit about the purpose behind Management World, and what types of participants it attracts?

MC: The purpose of TM Forum’s Management World (www.tmforum.org/rethink) is to bring the entire communications industry together in one place. If you go back ten years, the whole area we operate in used to be referred to as OSS/BSS. That whole industry is a $50m sector but over the last decade there has been a complete sea change in terms of how CSPs look at the back office. It has become the engine that will enable that change in terms of how the telecoms industry will become relevant to a whole range of other industries. TM Forum has been working away solving the challenges of that, and while that work has been progressing, the spotlight of CSP boards has turned onto the management software market.

We’ve seen the level of interest rise. The discussions have moved from being very technical discussions to ones focused on how you structure an industry, and how you create business models for this new, connected life and digital value chain.

This year, we expect more than 3,500 visitors which will be the largest audience yet. Management World is the place to be for any serious professional concerned with running a service provider business. This year’s theme is Rethinking Communications-Enabling Connected Life, and the event is designed to help service providers do just that. Instead of being a $1.5 trillion market in communications, the industry size will increase dramatically. That $7.5 trillion to $10 trillion pie is what the market is really looking at. Everyone is looking for a comfy chunk of that pie and the event is all about the complexities of achieving that.

CSPs are now saying: “This is what we are doing, this is the acquisition we are making.”

The seniority of the people attending has increased greatly. They will be coming to Dublin this year to talk about partnerships and selling products around this whole new connected life. The invitation-only Executive Programme will bring 200 senior and c-suite executives from the across the industry together to discuss issues connected with the theme, and one of the two strategic partners of Management World, Deutsche Telekom, is hosting a half-day ‘conference within a conference’ onsite for 50 of their most senior executives.

VP: Can you give us some of the highlights of this year’s upcoming event on May 21-24; some things that people won’t want to miss while they’re in Dublin?

MC: The Keynote Perspectives presentations will be very important and will take place on Tuesday and Wednesday morning. On Tuesday morning, the theme is more about how service providers are seeing the new world and how they’re reshaping themselves rapidly while not dropping the ball in their existing businesses. On Wednesday morning, we have a range of very senior executives from non-telecoms businesses who will share fascinating perspectives. Some of the C-level keynotes include the CEOs of Eircom and Telekom Malaysia, the CIOs of Telefónica O2 and Vodafone, and the CTO of Nato C3 Agency.

The main conference agenda features five Summits including: Profiting from Cloud Services; The Connected Customer Experience; Reducing Operations Costs and IT Risk; Delivering and Monetizing New Services; and Policy and Revenue Management. Across those five Summits there will be heavy participation from service providers, comprising 100 of the conference’s 170 speakers, including 55 service provider case studies representing over 25 countries and all global regions. Speakers represent some of the industry’s biggest names like NTT, Deutsche Telekom, China Mobile, AT&T, Facebook, Google, BskyB, Verizon, Oracle, Huawei, Cisco and more. We will also have two-day sessions dedicated to the Cable and Defence industries.

Forumville, always a popular destination on the Expo floor, features a range of Catalyst projects. There are 11 Catalysts this year which highlight collaborative efforts between service providers and suppliers to solve common industry issues. We have about 70 companies participating in Catalyst projects this year and they always catch peoples’ imaginations because they show the practical implementations of standards and real solutions to real world business issues.

Finally, one of the main things that we hear, time and time again, from attendees is the power of the networking opportunities at Management World. This year, there will be over 24 hours of dedicated networking opportunities, including a Business Networking Reception at Mansion House, as well as a sold-out conference expo featuring over 100 exhibitors.

VP: Based on what you’ve been hearing in the industry, and your understanding of the programme, what do you think will be some of the hottest topics at this year’s event? Can you give us your take on what some of the key takeaways will be?

MC: The hot topic, without a doubt, is going to be the new digital services ecosystem. Where is the world going, and what are people currently doing to address the challenges are key questions. The past years have always been about discussing what’s happening but always with a sense of denial. Six to nine months ago that started to change. CSPs are now saying: “This is what we are doing, this is the acquisition we are making.” They recognise they are not going to gain position through organic growth so the companies will be talking about what they are doing to position themselves in the digital services ecosystem. Nobody knows for certain where this is all going so the real goal is make yourself agile and flexible.

I’ll be most interested in how CSPs are positioning themselves to be relevant. Recently, I’ve found getting the perspective of companies like Amazon and Foursquare has been really interesting because they view things very differently. The CEO of Foursquare, for example, manages a global company with a workforce of 100 people. It’s incredibly nimble which means you can get results quickly.

My interest in Dublin will be in getting a further and deeper appreciation of where the industry is going and how participants see the role of TM Forum. It’s really a matter of trying to open your mind and absorb as much input as possible from as many different people as you can. We’ll be welcoming people from Google, big banks, pharmaceutical companies, analysts, venture capitalists and many other industries so there will be a lot to take in. My tip is to soak it all up at the show and take it home after the conference to think through at your leisure.

VP: Aside from attending Management World, what are some of the ways that people can engage with TM Forum and really benefit from the knowledge that you share?

MC: The conferences are just one piece of TM Forum. We collaborate 365 days a year and have more than 600 volunteer resources from our members working on about 50 standardisation projects as well as an increasing number of projects to address the new digital services ecosystem. The obvious place for people to stay informed is by using our website (www.tmforum.org), getting involved and joining the conversations going on.

All TM Forum members have access to all our publications, webinars, and Frameworx documentation and can contribute and participate in whatever they want to.

We also have a series of other conferences ranging from our large Americas event in Orlando, Florida in December to the regional Summit series of conferences that delve deep into the issues that face service providers in a given region and how the adoption of best practices and standards, like Frameworx, can help them succeed. We just held our Middle East and Latin America Summits in March and we will host our Africa Summit in Johannesburg this coming September.

There are many ways to find out what TM Forum is doing, get involved and keep involved throughout the year. There’s so much to take in given the pace at which the industry is developing and changing that I think TM Forum provides a vital facility for the development of the digital services ecosystem.

tmforumAbout TM Forum:

TM Forum is a global, non-profit industry association focused on simplifying the complexity of running a service provider’s business. As an established industry thought-leader, the Forum serves as a unifying force, enabling more than 850 companies across 195 countries to solve critical business issues through access to a wealth of knowledge, intellectual capital and standards. The Forum provides a unique, fair and safe environment for the entire value-chain to collaborate on pressing industry issues, helping companies of all sizes gain a competitive edge and the flexibility and speed they need to underpin future growth. For more information, visit www.tmforum.org.

RECENT ARTICLES

Phoenix Tower International gains investment from Grain and BlackRock

Posted on: March 29, 2024

Phoenix Tower International (PTI) has announced that Grain Management (Grain), through its flagship funds, and BlackRock, through a fund managed by its Diversified Infrastructure business (BlackRock) have made an investment

Read more

Connectbase expands baltic connectivity with Bitė partnership

Posted on: March 28, 2024

Connectbase has announced the addition of Bitė to its ecosystem. This partnership marks a step forward in enhancing connectivity options within the Baltic region, providing a link between local and

Read more