Surging proof-of-concept program produces robust solutions three to five times faster than traditional R&D projects, costing significantly less than closed innovation approaches

MORRISTOWN, NJ — December 12 , 2016 —TM Forum, the global industry association for digital business, today recognizes ten Catalyst projects for their exceptional innovation, and additionally congratulates three Catalyst projects for their award-winning efforts.

Catalyst projects are member-driven proof-of-concept demonstrations focused on developing innovative, commercially viable prototypes of new digital services and business models. These projects connect diverse companies to facilitate collaboration and foster the creation of innovative solutions to pressing digital business challenges. Catalyst projects create repeatability of their innovations by both contributing to and leveraging TM Forum’s best practices and standards including Frameworx™ and Open APIs.

TM Forum’s Catalyst program has grown by over 50 percent in the last year, with a total of 46 projects having been showcased at TM Forum Live! 2016, TM Forum Innovation InFocus and TM Forum Live! Asia. In total, over 100 member companies and hundreds of individual members have engaged in the Catalyst program over the last twelve months.

The most recent series of Catalyst projects were showcased December 7-8 at TM Forum Live! Asia in Singapore, which attracted a senior audience of over 400 delegates, including 50 CxOs. The conference focused on the digital business opportunities and challenges facing communications service providers (CSPs) in the APAC region, and as such, over 60 regional CSPs attended and shared their digital business innovations and best practices.

The Catalysts showcased at TM Forum Live! Asia focused on driving digital business innovation in the areas of open APIs, agile operations, virtualization, the Internet of Everything, omnichannel customer centricity and more. A judging panel comprised of 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 in the following categories:

Best in Show – Cognitive Digital Agent

• Champion: Globe Telecom
• Participants: Amdocs, Huawei, Infosys

Deputy CEO of TM Forum Nik Willetts commented, “This winner showcased the business outcomes exceptionally well, through the inventive use of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). Globe intends to implement this Catalyst, which has the potential to reduce costs by between 10 and 40 percent, over the coming months.”

Best Use of TM Forum Assets – APPEX Omnichannel

• Champion: Vodafone
• Participants: Apptium, ESRI, Huawei

Chairman of TM Forum’s Board, David Pleasance, presented the award and said, “This Catalyst is an important measure for value creation, demonstrating real-life applications and use of open APIs.”

Best Contribution to TM Forum Assets – Enabling the Digital Services Marketplace with Onboarding Automation

• Champions: AT&T, China Mobile, Orange, Verizon
• Participants: Amdocs, Cloud Best Practices Network, EnterpriseWeb, IBM, Huawei, Oracle

Presenting the award, TM Forum Board Member 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.”

Other innovative Catalyst projects showcased at TM Forum Live! Asia included:

• Joint Agile Delivery: Champion: AT&T, Orange; Participants: Cloud Best Practices Network, Huawei, IBM
• Beyond Sales: Hierarchical Capability Openness Platform for Better Ecosystem Champion: China Mobile; Participants: AsiaInfo, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Huawei
• New Business Models with Mobile Sponsored Data: Champions: NTT, Orange; Participants: CloudSense, Comptel, DataMi, Sigma Systems, Salesforce
• Experience Journey Shaping: Champions: China Telecom, KDDI, Orange; Participants: Ericsson, Knowesis, Subex, John Moores University
• Real Virtuality: Champions: BT, NTT; Participants: Hewlett Packard Enterprise, TechMahindra, TEOCO, TierOne
• Ecosystem to Ecosystem Platform: Champion: BT; Participants: Airtel, Axiata, Ericsson, IBM
• Omnichannel Collaboration Experience Across Digital Business Journey: Champion: China Mobile; Participants: Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, BOCO, Huawei, Tsinghua University

“The innovation impact we’ve seen this year is astounding, and it has been achievable only through these unique collaborations,” said Rebecca Sendel, vice president Catalysts & services, TM Forum. “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, and we expect to see more than 30 projects demonstrated at TM Forum Live! In Nice.”