TM Forum merges with IPSphere - bolsters business-level convergence credentials

IPSphere Forum concerns itself with developing standards and frameworks (like the TM Forum) but at the business layer of IP service provision using service-oriented architecture (SOA ) principles.

The goal is to automate offer, purchase and provisioning of service components among multiple stakeholders, says the press release.

This is complementary to the work undertaken within the TM Forum's with its Service Delivery Framework, which focuses on "enabling control of service lifecycle management across all execution environments allowing flexibility in binding services with product catalogues"

"The work they've been doing around the whole area of syndication of services and so on is very much front and centre to what we're doing for the last two or three years," TM Forum president, Martin Creaner, told TelecomTV.

The TM Forum is increasingly concerned with the business end of systems interoperability as the industry moves towards its next gen., IP-oriented incarnation.