Leaders from various information and communications technology sectors are coming together to share a glimpse of what lies ahead, as the ICT industry goes into a period of faster and more dynamic changes in the coming years. The conference will go beyond low-cost operational transformation and will examine the new digital economy, where real value will be created, continuous innovation and becoming highly customer centric.
This year's TM Forum Management World, themed "New game, new players, new rules," is bringing together more than 60 distinguished speakers to Nice from May 18-20.
Among the topics to be discussed by the keynote speakers are the possibilities for the mobile world with its projected user base of 4.5 billion by year's end, opportunities in the managed services space, paying attention to customer experience when launching new services, the evolution and propagation of e-money, cloud computing, and ways to reduce costs to ensure long-term competitive survival.
Speaking about these topics are 14 of the world's leading executives in the communications-media value chain. They include China Unicom Europe president William So, Telecom Italia CIO Giovanni Chiarelli, France Telecom EVP for strategic partnerships and GM for healthcare Thierry Zylberberg, Voice Commerce CEO Nick Ogden, Telecom Egypt chairman Akil Beshir, Verizon Services Operations SVP and CIO Fari Ebrahimi, and Primus Telecommunications International president John Melick.
Also on the roster of keynote speakers are Deutsche Telekom SVP for service management Jim Burke, UPC Broadband managing director and CIO Mehrdad Mansourpour, Telenet EVP for technology and solutions Jan Vorstermans, Oracle SVP and general manager for the communications global business Bhaskar Gorti, Yankee Group president and CEO Emily Green, Flirtomatic CEO Mark Curtis, and media, technology and communications futurist Gerd Leonhard.
Apart from the keynotes, the three-day Management World conference also features more than 200 speakers across six summits, which include successful business transformation, driving technology and operational excellence, growth through new content and innovative services, excellent customer experience, cloud services and revenue management and profitability.
Management World aims to bring together more than 3,000 executives from 80 countries to network, share ideas and learn from industry experience.
TM Forum president Martin Creaner related that 70% of last year's attendees rated the conference as "excellent and above average," vis-à-vis other similar events.
"This year, we intend to top that, keeping the focus on tackling the critical business issues facing our industry, and highlighting real innovation. Management World is all about taking ideas from theory to reality," he said.