sist companies to easily adopt the standards of TMF. Prospero has package and guide- lines based on actual implementation of TMF standards including case studies and downloadable solutions. According to TMF, knowledge base consists of both stan- dards and corporate knowledge. A company that wants to adopt a standard needs to look into both the definitions of the standard as well as make use of corporate knowledge published by companies that have already adopted the standard. Hence TMF document base has a good mix of standards, white papers, case studies, solu- tion suites, review/evaluation, and testimonials. Fundamentals of EMS, NMS and OSS/BSS The TMF conducts events to promote its studies and standards and these events are also a venue for service providers and system integrators to demo their products that comply with TMF standards. The TeleManagement Forum also offers certifi- cation. It certifies solutions that comply with its standards, where the solution could even be a simple implementation of an interface based on the definitions of TMF. It also certifies individuals based on an evaluation of their knowledge on specific standards. "Webinar" or online seminars are also conducted by TMF. People around the globe can register and listen to seminars on new concepts that need to be worked on in standardization and studies on implementation of existing stan- dards. Information about these seminars, hosted on the Web are published on the TMF Web site and also mailed to TMF members. "Catalyst Projects" are used by TMF to conduct studies and develop standards on emerging issues in telecom management. While team projects perform studies on base concepts, the catalyst project shows how the base concepts can be used to solve common, critical indus- try challenges. Web site: www.tmforum.org 7.4 DMTF (Distributed Management Task Force) The DMTF is a standards organization started in 1992 with the name "Desktop Management Task Force." The name was later changed to "Distributed Management Task Force" with their standard