BT (News - Alert) and Qwest are championing an effort, in which amazon.com is a participant, to create consistent definitions and service catalogs for both traditional telco offerings like voice, video and data connectivity as well as newer Web- and cloud-based services. The catalog aims to provide functional definitions for all services, denoting how to create and define, fulfill and assure them.

 

These definitions are intended to help both traditional and cloud-based service providers expedite the introduction of new converged services.

 

The effort is a TeleManagement Forum (News - Alert) initiative. It’s the second phase of the Service Model Catalyst and will be on display at the forum’s Management World Americas event Dec. 8 through 10 in Orlando, Fla.

 

Also involved in the project are Chinook Hosting, which provides hosted unified communications, Office Communications Server 2007, Hosted Exchange 2007, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, and Dynamics CRM 4.0 through a white-labeled resale channel; Comptel Corp., which sells operational support systems; and Network Cadence, a consulting firm for communications service providers.

 

Greg Scullard, CTO office director for Comptel, says this Catalyst program got off the ground in May when the companies joined forces to use the service catalog and the Product and Service Assembly (better known as PSA) architecture the TMF had already compiled as the basis for a larger effort aimed at enabling service providers of all stripes to create mashups combining traditional telco and IT services.

 

The second phase of the project revolves around creating the necessary definitions, catalogs and framework to enable Qwest (News - Alert) to launch and support cloud-based services from amazon.com and BT paired with hosted services from Chinook, and Qwest’s own offers.

 

With those definitions and catalogs in place, Scullard explains, service providers like Qwest can partner and more easily see what each other have to offer on a wholesale basis. “I kind of like to call it Web services on steroids,” he says.

 

Having these common underlying definitions also means the provider can more easily support those services throughout their lifecycles – whether those service come from their own networks or via wholesale relationships with other providers.

 

“A service is a service is a service, whether we’re talking about voice and data or cloud-based, [or services] like hosted Exchange or online storage,” Daniel Vacanti, director of technology at Network Cadence tells TMCnet.

  

These services all can be cataloged in the same catalog and through that catalog can be assured in the same way and fulfilled in the same way, he says, adding that telcos with an understanding of that will be the most likely to survive in the “new world order of telecom.”