TM Forum announces major new program aimed at large-scale buyers
The TM Forum announced today that it has been working with the UK Government to establish a new industry program aimed at serving the procurement needs of large-scale end-user organizations. These buyers purchase IT and communications technology on a scale equivalent to many service providers and as such many of the Forum's standards and guidelines and best practices are directly applicable.
The TM Forum has traditionally mainly served the needs of the telecom industry. However, with growing convergence of technologies spurring a major change in the demarcation lines between telecom, cable, media and web players that position is changing very quickly. The same underlying driver, technology convergence, is also changing the picture for many large-scale consumers of communications and IT technologies. No longer are these separate strands of their procurement requirements, the needs for an integrated procurement approach are rising with the advent of convergent approaches such as: Service Oriented computing architectures (SOA), all IP networking, and advanced Service Delivery Platforms.
The needs of large scale service providers are becoming indistinguishable from the needs of large-scale users such as government departments, defense industries, aerospace and financial services industries.
Andrew Bull Head of Infrastructure, Strategy and Architecture for the UK's Revenue and Customs departments commented "We need to ensure the best value for money for UK taxpayers in our investments in IT and communications. Following international standards is one of the ways we can do that and we are delighted to be trail-blazing a new approach to working with an international trade association like the TM Forum. We hope other governments and large scale buyers will follow our lead."
Martin Creaner, TM Forum President said "This is a natural extension of our work with service providers around the world - convergence is making the needs of users and service providers ever more aligned. Standards allow economies of scale that these ultra large buyers want to tap into. We are delighted to establish a new program aimed at meeting these needs." The new program is expected to focus on ensuring that clear procurement guides can be developed to help large-scale buyers drive to standards in their procurements and market education."
An initial meeting to launch the "Large Scale Buyers" program is being held at the TM Forum Management World, in Nice on the 21st at 1pm in the Euterpe room. The meeting is Open to all conference attendees.
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