Interest in TM Forum’s Excellence Awards 2010 has soared to an all time high it was announced today, as a record 53 official nominees hit the judging slate. TM Forum’s Excellence Awards are regarded as the most prestigious awards of their kind, recognizing global leadership, innovation and excellence, whilst giving significance to the achievements of companies within the communications industry.

Attracting nominations from Communications Service Providers, suppliers and systems integrators, the TM Forum Excellence Awards are widely recognized as truly impartial awards for the communications industry.

This year’s awards include four new best practice categories:
— TM Forum Industry Leadership Award – to be awarded to the company demonstrating leadership, dedication and commitment to the Forum’s industry collaboration activities, and overall progress in the industry.
— TM Forum Operational Excellence Award – to be awarded to the Communications Service Provider demonstrating the most innovative and effective use of TM Forum Solution Frameworks to deliver tangible cost reduction, efficiency improvement and operational agility.
— TM Forum Solution Excellence Award – to be awarded to the supplier or system integrator demonstrating the most innovative and effective use of TM Forum Solution Frameworks to deliver tangible cost reduction and efficiency improvement.
— TM Forum Business Innovation Award – to be awarded to the Communications Service Provider demonstrating the most innovative and successful new service or business model.

As interest in the awards soar competition will be fierce, with 10 entries for the Industry Leadership category, 11 for the Operational Excellence category, 26 for the Solution Excellence category and 8 for the new Business Innovation category.

An independent panel of highly-respected industry experts will review the list and narrow it down to six finalists in each category. The winners for certain categories will be decided through an open vote by the 750 TM Forum member companies, and announced to an audience of more than 2,500 senior executives from the industry at the Forum’s flagship Management World 2010 conference on the morning of Tuesday, May 18, 2010.

The Official Nominees for the TM Forum Excellence Awards 2010 are:

TM Forum Solution Excellence Award
Alcatel-Lucent
cVidya Networks
generationE Technologies
INFONOVA GmbH
Tata Consultancy Services
IBM
Subex Ltd.
Intelliden, Inc.
BI Telecom
Centina Systems
Cisco
Clarity
Comarch SA
ConceptWave Software Inc.
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
IBM Corporation
Kabira Technologies
Microsoft Corporation
Telcordia Technologies
NetCracker Technology Corp.
Netformx, Inc.
Redknee
Systems Mechanics Ltd.
Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.

TM Forum Industry Leadership Award
BSM impact Limited
cVidya Networks
IBM
NetCracker Technologies Corp.
Qwest Communictions
Telcordia Technologies
AMDOCS Inc.
DoD
FROX Communication
The OpenNMS Group, Inc.

Operational Excellence Award
China Mobile Communications Corporation
China Unicom have two entries for this category
Magyar Telekom
Saudi Telecommunications Company
Slovak Telekom
Tata Communications
Telekom Slovenije
Telefónica O2UK Limited
Vodafone D2 GmbH

TM Forum Business Innovation Award
BT have two entries for this category
China Unicom
IBM
Microsoft Corporation
Qwest Communications
Tata Consultancy Services
Telefonica Latin America & Huawei Technologies