BT, Cisco, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia and Siemens form RosettaNet...

EUROPEMEDIA-(C)2003 Van Dusseldorp & Partners - http://www.vandusseldorp.com/

RosettaNet, the technology industry's e-business standards consortium, has announced the formation of a Telecommunications Industry (TC) Council. BT, Cisco, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia

The TC Council, which is comprised of global network operators and equipment suppliers, will take a leadership role in driving adoption of the standard within the telecommunications industry sector and related supply chain ecosystems. Building on the past standards integration success realised by the high tech industry, the TC Council is slated to work closely with established RosettaNet Supply Chain Managing Boards to support development activities while also engaging in implementation programe initiatives and deployment projects.

"Over the past few years, telecommunications companies have been heavily involved in RosettaNet as a result of the synergies that exist between the technology and telecommunications industries, including their shared supply networks," said Jennifer Hamilton, CEO of RosettaNet. "Our goal in establishing a formal Telecommunications Industry Council is to ensure more cohesive relationships between key players in the respective industry supply chains. On behalf of RosettaNet and the greater business community, we look forward to the extended collaboration, leadership and expertise that this esteemed group will bring."

In forming the TC Council, leaders in the telecommunications industry have acknowledged that the RosettaNet model addresses many of the business process issues facing companies today. For example, the acceleration of product lifecycles is impacting business-to-business communication between trading partners more than ever before. Adoption of RosettaNet can, in effect, build-in critical success factors by helping to streamline communications linkages between suppliers and customers, including real-time data exchanges in the areas of design, product information, forecast, order and inventory management and logistics.

Adding to the intricacies of the telecommunications supply network, telecom products themselves are becoming increasingly complex as equipment is being designed at a sub-component level and produced by contract manufacturers, a scenario that requires real-time collaboration between trading partners during engineering development and manufacturing processes. Similarly, the co-ordination of outsourced manufacturing dictates that forecast, order and inventory management requirements be closely managed to synchronise with demand of product for market introduction, ongoing delivery of service/support and end of life phases.

"The supply chain of the telecommunications industry extends from semiconductor fabricators, through outsourced manufacturers to original equipment designers, and ultimately, on to service providers that rely on industry solutions to enable new product offerings," said Karen Peterson, vice-president and research director, Gartner, Inc. "With a supply chain of this breadth and complexity, accurate and timely communication between suppliers and customers is mandatory to align engineering and manufacturing processes with product-based service launches. The adoption of e-business standards will enable enterprises in the telecommunications industry to do this quicker and at a lower cost than developing one off integration strategies."

It is expected that RosettaNet's TC Council will grow to include additional founding member companies representing the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific regions over the next few months. Currently, active discussions are underway with prospective manufacturer and operators candidates, including Vodafone.

The TC Council is the fifth industry body to be formed since RosettaNet was formally launched in 1998 by a group of leading Information Technology (IT) firms. Leading Electronic Components (EC) manufacturers subsequently joined together to form the EC Board in August 1999. RosettaNet added a Semiconductor Manufacturing (SM) Board in October 2000 and a SolutionProvider (SP) Board in June 2001 to support the growing needs in the industry.

RosettaNet is a non-profit consortium dedicated to the collaborative development and rapid deployment of open internet-based business standards that align processes within the global technology trading networks. More than 500 companies, representing over E86bn in annual information technology, electronic components and semiconductor manufacturing revenues, currently participate in RosettaNet's standards development, strategy and implementation activities. ((Distributed via M2 Communications Ltd - http://www.m2.com))