Catalyst Overview

TeleManagement Forum (TM Forum) Catalyst Projects represent a unique market approach to solving some of the most pressing operational and interoperability issues facing the industry today. These collaborative undertakings integrate the off-the-shelf products of multiple suppliers to test points of interoperability and showcase specific business-process solutions. They further aim to demonstrate the viability of communications software and the wider tenets of the TM Forum's New Generation OSS initiative.

Catalyst Showcase Program

The design and development of a seamless solution is very complex. When the factor of solution components coming from multiple suppliers is added, the challenge is even more difficult. The TM Forum has created the Catalyst Showcase Program to address the OSS interoperability capabilities that Service Providers are demanding.

Key aspects of the Catalyst Program include:

• Architectures employing a common information bus across the applications
• Common information models
• Workflow-based business process control

These projects address key issues Service Providers are dealing with, including:

• High integration costs
• Relative inflexibility to change
• Rapid time to market with new services

The projects employ aspects of key architectural concepts contained in the TM Forum guidelines. The solutions validate the effectiveness of these guidelines in reducing integration difficulty and costs, as well as improving overall solution flexibility.