Well, Impact 2010 is over. It's been four and a half days of terrific content, catching up with other IBMers, customers and business partners. All of the Telco related sessions finished Wednesday so the last day and a half today, I have been concentrating on product updates to Business Process Management products. I went to a WebSphere Process Server V7 update yesterday and a WebShere Services Registry and Repository this morning. By far, the best session of the last two days was the final session which covered how to get started and be successful on your first BPM project. The presenter had lots of recommendations which made a lot of sense. Once the presentation is posted to the Impact collaboration site, I will summarise it (I didn't think to do it as the session ran as I did for the telco sessions - sorry!)
The WPS update had the BPM product Architect Eric Herness (BPM Chief Architect) along with Amy Dickson (WPS Product Manager) and Kevin Barker (WBI Architect) went through the many improvements that were introduced with WPS V7 as well as the improvements in WebSphere Integration Developer.
As I write this (on my phone) I am sitting downstairs in the Venitian waiting for the time to tick over before I head to the airport. Unfortunately, McCarran Airport (LAS) doesn't have an American Airlines lounge*, so I might as well wait here where I have free wifi and food as be at the airport. From there, I go to Los Angelies (LAX) and then finally home (after 15 or so hours in the air) to Melbourne.
Next week, I will be heading to the TeleManagement World in Nice, France so if I have wifi connections during the sessions, I will post from the sessions there as well. I hope you'll join me there or failing that, at least read about it here.
* The observant and well travelled among you will know that LAS does actually provide free wifi, but sitting at the airport is not as nice as sitting in the comfy chairs at the hotel....
#ibmimpact
Telco Talk

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Andrew Larmour
Impact 2010 - Summary |
Impact 2010 - ICE and CAFTA Next Generation OSS/BSSGBM, an IBM business partner and IBM Software group proposed to ICE that they base their new OSS/BSS architecture on the TeleManagement Forum's Frameworx (eTOM, TAM, SID, TNA) - for which they used the WebSphere Telecom Content Pack and IBM Dynamic Process Edition to ensure ICE would have the standards compliance and dynamic BPM capabilities. By using WTCP and DPE, ICE reduced the effort required to build and deploy their new processes by an estimated 20-50%. A fundamental principle of Dynamic BPM is the Business Services layer which sits on top of the BPM layer which in turn sits on the SOA layer. A Business Service is abstracted up from the physical process. For instance, a business service might be 'Check Technical Availability' which would apply regardless of the service you are talking about - mobile, POTS or xDSL. These business services are defined within the Telecom Content Pack which enables system integrators like GBM to accelerate the architecture work on projects like this one for ICE. ![]() GBM and ICE have not yet been able to measure that acceleration that WTCP and DPE provided, but anecdotal evidence suggests that it was significant. In preparation for CAFTA, ICE have already launched a 3G network and are preparing to launch pre-paid services in preparation to compete with several new operators that will enter the market this year. #ibmimpact |
Impact 2010 - Globe Telecom mentioned during keynote
At this morning's keynote session with Beth Smith (IBM) and Shanker Ramamurthy (IBM) one of my customers - Globe Telecom from the Philippines was mentioned - unfortunately they could not be here to see if for themselves, so I thought I would post the photos and short video
Some official videos have been uploaded to YouTube - taken from the real (read good quality) cameras at the event. I have extracted out the relevant Telco section and added subtitles to clarify what Beth and Shankar are actually saying. #ibmimpact |
Impact 2010 - AT&T, Using SOA & BPM to accelerate business valueThey have deployed Rational Requisite Pro to capture requirements without the need to get users away from their beloved MS Word. In the last five months, their requirements have gone from 15,000 requirements registered in January to over 30,000 now. Certainly illustrates the traction that they are achieving with their business people. Users access Req Pro via Citrix sessions and the tools are available to thousands of business users. AT&T are also exposing WebSphere Business Modeler and iRise to a smaller set of subject matter expert users - building a Centre of Excellence in UI design and Process Modelling. So far, they have modelled over 800 process flows base on eTOM models which have been extended to meet their specific requirements. All of these are stored within a common Rational Asset Manager instance which helps their business analysts to improve asst use and reuse. Those process models feed directly into the model driven development method which is aligned with the requirements and process models. That MDD method uses WebSphere Integration Developer(WID), Rational Software Architect (RSA) for development and WebSphere Process Server (WPS) runtime. WebShere Business Modeler and WebShere Services Registry and Repository (WSRR) in support of the runtime. IBM GBS have put in place processes to support AT&T's development life cycle and governance requirements. Key success factors that AT&T see include:
![]() * AT&T have been through multiple de-mergers and mergers and acquisitions over the past 10 years resulting in a hugely complex IT environment. #ibmimpact |
Impact 2010 - BPM in the Cloud
I have just seen Amy Wohl of Amy D Wohl Opinions present on Cloud computing, she was going through the various cloud models and spoke about Community Clouds. What she means by that is multiple community focused clouds as part of a larger (private) cloud. An example of that is the Vietnam Government that bought an IBM Cloudburst to provide multiple virtual private clouds to small businesses in Vietnam so that they can have access to computing power that they otherwise now be able to afford. For Telcos, this could be an offering to their local community groups - perhaps a local schools, bar, sporting clubs, service clubs etc but also potentially for commercial organisations - perhaps to small businesses.
She also made the interesting point that (in her opinion) we are too early in the cloud evolution to actually define standards. She believes that any standards set now would stifle innovation in cloud technology and interoperability. I was interested to hear about this since I attended a web conference call a few weeks ago run by the TeleManagement Forum's effort to create standards around clouds, particularly For Enterprise use rather than public clouds. I guess the Enterprise cloud market is the most likely type of cloud user that will need interoperability first, thus the emphasis on standards. Amy made a really interesting point during the Q&A - she said that when she was at Microsoft a few weeks ago and asked about transactional activity in their cloud - they said that MS could not do it.... Very interesting especially when you consider that transactional integrity is a core capability on IBM's cloud capability. <edit> I asked Amy about the TMF Cloud standardisation - she hadn't heard about it, but did say that she thought that TMF's approach was right - asking the enterprise customers to specify their requirements - she also thought they were probably the right place to start for any cloud standards too. </edit> #ibmimpact |
Impact 2010 - Gridit case study
They do not make exclusive agreements with the content/service providers and provide their customers with freedom of choice. For Gridit, the customer is king - they will seek out new content providers if there is demand from the customers. Gridit also interact with local network providers and 3rd party content providers giving the customers a single point of contact and billing for the services that they resell. What Gridit are providing is pretty similar to an app store solution we deployed last year in Vietnam which was also a joint venture by a number of Telcos and a bank which provided a retail online store for products and services from those communications providers as well as 3rd party content providers except that Gridit are also offering a hosted wholesale service - I could go to Gridit and build my new company 'Larmourcom' and offer products and services from a range of providers that Gridit front end for Larmourcom. Gridit can stand up an online commerce portal for Larmourcom and also provide an interface to the back end providers to allow for traditional and non-traditional service assurance, fulfilment and billing processes. ![]() Like the Vietnamese app store, Gridit are also using WebSphere Commerce to provide the online commerce and catalogue. For Gridit, the benefits they expect to see (as a result of a Business Value Assessment that was conducted) was 48% faster time to value by using Dynamic BPM and Telecom Content Pack versus a traditional BPM model. That is real business value and a great story for both Gridit and IBM. #ibmimpact |
Impact 2010 -Orange France, Decreasing the development time for Telco apps![]() #ibmimpact Once I get back to my PC, I will insert an Orange video the positions the usage and simplicity of their offering. |
Impact 2010 - Telus overview - Ed JungTo achieve this agility, Telus are using WebShere Telecom Content Pack (WTCP) as an accelerator to keep costs down, while still maintaining standards compliance for their architecture. He sees key success factors as:
For Telus, they elected to start with fulfilment scenarios within their IPTV system. The basis for this is a data mapping to and from a common model - within the TeleManagement Forum's standards, that relates to the SID. Ed sees this common model as key to their success. Dynamic endpoint selection is used within Telus to enable their processes to integrate and participate with their BPM layer. Ed suggest the key factors for a successful WTCP project are:
Ed thinks that last point (configure data / reduce code) is the best description of an agile architecture that really drive lower total cost of ownership for projects as well as a lower capital expenditure for each project. |