Today's communications world is not your grandfather's, or even your father's, communications world. What we used to call telecom is now a much broader industry that encompasses entertainment, Internet and web-based media and services and much more. And communications has been quickly converging with the IT world, which has necessitated a rethinking of how we approach a business architecture for the present day.
Over 10 years ago, TM Forum began defining a program called NGOSS to help prepare the ground for the demands of this new telecom world. And if you come from any aspect of the communications industry, chances are you've at least heard of NGOSS.
But NGOSS has never been a static framework, and in fact its component pieces have been continuously evolving over the years. Over this time, we've continually made a series of improvements and additions to all of the NGOSS component parts including: the Business Process Framework (eTOM), the Information Framework (SID) and the Application Framework (TAM).
Then about 2 years ago, we started looking closely at the consistency across all of the individual frameworks that make up NGOSS: how consistent was eTOM with the SID and SID with TAM and so on. This evaluation kicked off a major piece of work designed at improving that consistency.
The other major activity we started on about a year ago was looking into how to ensure NGOSS is ready for a world already enamored with the concept of Service Oriented ArchitectureA computer systems architectural style for creating and using business processes packaged as servicesA computer systems architectural style for creating and using business processes packaged as services (SOA).
NGOSS was developed when SOA was only a twinkle in the eye of the communications and IT industries, and while over the years SOA concepts have been embraced by NGOSS, it wasn't explicitly developed as an SOA-driven approach.