MORRISTOWN, NJ—As Service Providers struggle with a growing diversity of information and data models, there is a pressing need for a single common framework to harmonize all information models across the industry. “The acceptance by the ITU-T of the TM Forum Information Framework as that single framework, is a major step forward for the industry,” says TM Forum President Martin Creaner.
The ITU-T Recommendation M.3190 , led by Dave Sidor of Nortel and Knut Johannessen of Telenor, initially encompasses the “Product” and “Service” domains of The TM Forum Information Framework v 7.5, as well as some explanatory addenda. These elements of Recommendation M.3190 will serve as an introduction to the Information Framework “Analysis Model,” which will cover all of the information required to implement use cases based on the TM Forum Business Process Framework (eTOM).
“We’re not stopping here; future submissions to the ITU-T will include other SID domains as well,” said Josh Salomon, co-chair of the TM Forum Information Framework team. For two years, Salomon worked on due diligence with other TM Forum members and staff, including John Reilly, subject matter expert; Paul Levine, standards development consultant, Telcordia (ret.); and John Wilmes, chief technical architect, Progress Software.
“We will continue to ensure the SID analysis model is implementation-independent,” added Wilmes, noting the Information Framework team will continue to focus on information and relationships to enable multiple implementations to be derived from a single common model.