TM Forum and BT unveil catalyst project to address key enterprise concerns on cloud computing
LONDON—March 24, 2010—
TM Forum and
BT today unveiled the
Cloud Service Broker (CSB) Catalyst, a new
TM Forum rapid development and demonstration project that will define and create a trusted and governed cloud management platform, to simplify the delivery of complex cloud services to enterprise customers.
The collaboration, which also involves
Comptel Corporation,
Infonova,
OpenNMS Group and
Square Hoop, will look at the role of the CSB in addressing enterprise cloud customer concerns in areas such as application performance, security and vendor lock-in. The platform will be demonstrated at
Management World 2010, taking place May 18-20, 2010 in Nice.
Key Facts.
- In this TM Forum Catalyst project, developed by BT’s Innovate & Design organisation, BT Global Services will serve as both an enterprise consumer and retailer of a number of complex cloud services. The project, consisting of a definition and development phase and a final demonstration, will explore the aggregation, delivery and operation of cloud services while addressing a variety of trust and governance requirements.
- The CSB Catalyst will address a number of the key concerns for Cloud adoption highlighted by TM Forum’s
Enterprise Cloud Buyers Council (ECBC). The ECBC represents the interests of large Enterprise buyers and is the cornerstone of TM Forum’s managing Cloud Services Initiative - an ecosystem of cloud buyers and sellers of which BT is a key member. The goal of the ecosystem is to drive Tm Forum’s Cloud Services Initiative in order to improve the understanding of the needs of enterprise cloud buyers and to remove any potential barriers to the uptake of cloud technology.
- Comptel will provide an order portal and active service catalog, to manage the different components of a service, as well as a service designer to aid the rapid assembly of cloud services. These concepts were initially demonstrated though previous catalyst collaborations with BT, namely the
Product and Service Assembly (PSA) initiative and the
Service Model catalyst.
- Infonova will provide a billing catalog and billing engine, to manage the monetization of cloud services, and to enable the enterprise customer to be virtual operators of these services.
- OpenNMS will provide monitoring services as part of service assurance
- Square Hoop, through product catalogs, will orchestrate what is presented to the enterprise customer by aggregating product, service and billing information.
Supporting Quotes
- “As the cloud services market matures, there is the potential for these offerings to develop into complex combinations of services from a range of trusted and less trusted sources,” said Gary Bruce, catalyst lead, BT Innovate & Design. “The CSB Catalyst will explore resolutions to the issues that enterprises face when buying these types of combination cloud services and put in place the governance, security and transparency that will be imperative to their adoption.”
- John Gillam, BT Global Services said, “The Cloud Service Broker TM Forum Catalyst provides an excellent opportunity to address the barriers to cloud adoption for enterprise customers. Whilst enterprises wish to lever value from the cloud, they are apprehensive over losing control, citing areas of concern such as IT Governance, application performance, runaway costs, inadequate security and technology lock-in. The CSB addresses this by matching cloud services to each enterprise's needs, enforcing the right policies, and then showing how this can be backed up by an ongoing service level agreement. We believe developments of this nature will be of primary importance in future cloud services.”
- “The CSB explores some of the core issues that enterprises wishing to take advantage of future increasingly complex cloud services are likely to face,” said Jim Warner, vice president, cloud programs, TM Forum. “These issues are at the heart of the TM Forum’s Managing Cloud Services initiative, of which the ECBC and the various cloud Catalysts are a critical part.”
