Telstra has warned that unless telcos band together and unify under one Cloud policy framework, the sector will face a customer nightmare.
Speaking at the TM Forum Spotlight in Sydney, Telstra’s executive director for architecture in online and media, Michael Lawrey, said the industry must work together.
“If we don’t get the right standards around Cloud, it will be a nightmare for our customer base,” Lawrey said.
“At the end of the day we have to be sure that we contribute to the industry to make sure that our Clouds talk to each other...we don’t want to repeat what we had with SMS [when telecommunications providers had issues sending and receiving text messages from other telcos].”
Lawrey said end users will suffer if telco compliance isn’t implemented across the board.
“If we’re not all compliant to the same framework, it will be a disaster for the customer at the end of the day”
Lawrey said involvement in associations such the TM Forum was one way to collaborate, while telcos seeking top-down support from the enterprise was another.
“We have become highly involved with TMF around Cloud...it’s really about bringing people together and there are a lot more players deciding they need to be part of this,” he said.
“…You have to have sponsorship across the enterprise from the top down, bring those changes down, and have an agreed position on how to bring the business forward.”
Lawrey also provided some insight into the deployment of Telstra’s new business process framework, saying that a shared approach was key.
“The shared information data model is one of the biggest and most important frameworks...we pinned most of our transformation around this model,” he said.
“From these frameworks, we’ve developed the Telstra architectural frameworks...so it’s really important that we have the overall Telstra model and have an end-to-end telco environment.”
Implementing the TM Forum enhanced telecom operations maps (eTOM) business process framework as a reference, Telstra adopted an IP-based service delivery setup, which now supports its multimedia and content service delivery framework development.
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