OGC and TM Forum Address Location Information Issues

TM Forum and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) recently signed a liaison agreement to provide value for the members of each organisation by connecting the OGC’s location standards framework and industry consensus process to TM Forum’s core competency programmes, vertical industry initiatives and Frameworx standards and best practices, which have been adopted by four out of five global service providers.

Mark Reichardt, president and CEO of the Open Geospatial Consortium, explained location and the communications infrastructure are linked in emergency management, cyber security, Building Information Models, transportation and many other domains. Given this reality, there are many areas in which TM Forum and the OGC can work together to advance their respective missions. Through this partnership they will seek to collaboratively advance standards-based best practices to further the location enablement of digital services to serve a wide range of stakeholders. In the near term, there are many common interests and domain focus areas such as eHealth, the Smart Grid and Smart Cities.

With the digital economy growing at a staggering rate, this partnership is really about creating value for both of organisations’ members by working together on the development and integration of location standards, said Craig Bachmann, director, industry initiatives, TM Forum. As they invest in smart grid, M2M and digital health initiatives, integrating location standards into Frameworx has become critical to their success.

TM Forum is the largest global trade association focused on bringing together the digital ecosystem, including communication service providers, digital service providers and enterprises, with the goal of enabling an open digital world. The OGC is an international consortium of more than 475 companies, government agencies, research organisations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards.