About Us

The Story Behind Passionate About OSS

If you’re struggling to find the right information to handle your Operational Support Systems (OSS) and Business Support Systems (BSS) then you’ve come to the right place.  Welcome to PassionateAboutOSS.com, the site that applies a 360-degree view, looking at OSS and BSS from all angles. Not just the perspective of a carrier, a supplier, a market analyst, an investor or an individual implementer/operator, but an impartial perspective across all of these dimensions. 

I’m Ryan Jeffery and I AM Passionate About OSS.

PassionateAboutOSS.com was initially formed in 2012 as an outlet to share my passion for OSS with the global OSS / BSS community (or anyone who would care to listen really). It exists for the singular purpose of making operational support tools even more impactful than they already are.

Where the passion for OSS came from

PAOSS may have started in 2012, but our first significant contact with an OSS goes back way further than that. All the way back to 2000 in fact when we were shipped off (kicking and screaming I might add) to Taiwan to work with their first new fixed-line telco after de-regulation.

I can vividly recall how out of my depth I felt on that first OSS / BSS project. I was in my 20s and had relocated to a foreign country for the first time. I had a million questions (probably more actually). The challenges seemed immense (they were). I was working with talented and seasoned telco veterans who had led as many as 500 people, but had almost as little OSS / BSS experience as me. None of us had worked together before. We were all struggling. We were all about to embark on an incredibly steep learning curve, by far the steepest of my career.

Unfortunately, there were no resources dedicated to the nuances and pitfalls of OSS implementations back then (to my knowledge anyway). Nothing that helped us scramble up the learning curve and avoid the many mis-steps we took along the way.

Despite that, a passion quickly took hold for OSS / BSS products and projects. So much so that I willingly averaged an 85 hour work week across the next few years whilst only being paid for a standard 40 hour week. I jumped from country to country implementing OSS for some of Australasia’s biggest telcos. There was still so much to learn! There still is!

The same passion back then continues to burn brightly today.

If you also share a Passion for OSS or are currently feeling out of your depth on an OSS project (and I suspect we all are!) then please read on…

The OSS Clients. The OSS Projects

Since that first project in Taiwan, carriers, service providers, vendors, utilities, and enterprise customers have all engaged us. These customers include iconic organisations such as Telstra, SingTel-Optus, Alcatel-Lucent (now part of Nokia), Reliance InfoCom (India), VNPT (Vietnam), PT Telkom (Indonesia), Motorola, IBM, NBN Co, ANZ Bank, Kearney, Tech Mahindra, Infosys Consulting, Omdia, BAI Communications, ETSA, Western Power, Powerlink, TFN (Taiwan) and many more including a variety of OSS/BSS suppliers.

Their projects have traversed the full end-to-end life cycle of NMS / OSS projects including:

  • Strategic advisory
  • Due diligence and M&A
  • Requirement identification/capture
  • Marketing/collateral development
  • Supplier/vendor selection
  • Program/project management
  • Enterprise/solutions architecture
  • Business analysis/process design
  • Testing
  • Training
  • Data migration
  • and more

In fulfilling these projects, we’ve developed systems, methodologies, stories and insights. Many are published here on Passionate About OSS and will hopefully assist you to plan, manage, simplify and de-risk your OSS / BSS projects too. Others are incorporated into the books and other publications we’ve created.

As independent consultants (ie agnostic of vendor, technology, service-provider or org-charts), assistance comes without any such biases, being answerable only to the customer and their objectives.

We’ve been recognised as a TM Forum Outstanding Contributor (2022) for our contributions towards the Transformation Project Framework (TPF) [GB1011] and related transformation guides.

Fast Forward to Today and Then Into The Future

In some ways, we’re slightly disillusioned with OSS from repeatedly facing the same challenges on projects over the last two decades. Collectively, we’re yet to solve some of our most important challenges. PassionateAboutOSS.com has even issued an OSS Call for Innovation that outlines the challenges and opportunities that await us all.

But conversely, we’re in awe of what OSS can achieve and the brilliance of the multitudes, like you, who have brought them to life. The endless possibility of what OSS can be and do makes me excited to get up and jump into the fray every morning (often including weekends, to the chagrin of my long-suffering family).

We continue to be Passionate About OSS because of the opportunities that await, to improve our tools, improve our skills, and improve the lives of the vast populations of users who interact with comms networks, services, and our OSS / BSS. 

Most importantly, our OSS have the ability to revolutionise the organisations we work for. They are the glue that connect the network and technology stacks of our clients to their customers to deliver to deliver a return on all that invested capital. They manage the workforce and essential activities. They operationalise a machine that’s arguably become the most important in the world – the global telecommunications network.

We need to do all of these things better each day, collectively and individually. The website, the books, the podcast, the blogs, the videos, the OSS/BSS vendor directory and all of the other materials are our little contribution to help you on your unique journey of changing the world with your OSS and BSS solutions.

So, that’s the story behind Passionate About OSS. It is now THE resource to guide you through the nuances and pitfalls of OSS vendor selections and implementations.

And as you can see, our “WHY” goes way deeper than just “your OSS solution.” We want to help make your organisation and the entire OSS industry become greater than it already is. We’d love to learn your story and where your passion for OSS stems from

The most important role we perform for our clients and the industry at large is as connectors. We connect people, products, vendors, projects, ideas, technologies, methodologies, buyers, sellers and so much more. It’s through these connections that we collectively help solve problems. Reach out if you believe we can help you form valuable connections in the industry.

To reiterate, we are connectors, which also means we’re open to collaborating. We’re open to discussing whatever form of collaboration that might be. Connect with us:

  • If you would like to share your mutual passion for OSS, engage with us and/or the community of others who are passionate about OSS….
  • If you think PassionateAboutOSS may be the right partner to assist your company with an upcoming project…
  • If you’re aware of another company’s OSS consultancy assignment that you think we could assist with (and would like to collect a finder’s fee)…

… then we’d be delighted to hear from you via the contact form below the testimonials. Of course, you’re also welcome to leave your thoughts on any of the comments pages or contact forms sprinkled throughout the site too.

And if you haven’t already, don’t forget to schedule a no obligations, one-on-one consultation with us today.

We described the rapid learning curve in our story above, so we’ve created mountains of content to help you no matter where you are in your OSS journey. This includes:

Testimonials

What clients have said about Passionate About OSS

Ashley Neale
VP, Speedcast
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Over a number of months Passionate About OSS (PAOSS) consulted to us and our customer, assisting our successful award of an over AU$100M project. I’m a huge fan of PAOSS and their ability to relate the complexity of OSS to a layman and, importantly, the value to a user
TM Forum
Outstanding Contributor Award precis
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Ryan’s exemplary contribution to the End-to-end Open Digital Architecture program has led to the creation of TM Forum’s guidebook “Transformation Project Framework,” which provides TM Forum members with a revolutionary framework for transformation projects.... He is a listener, innovator, and excellent leader
Tony Kalcina
CEO Clarity International
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Ryan of Passionate About OSS was instrumental in delivering the Clarity OSS to many of our tier-one carrier clients across a 5 year span
Steven Cocchiarella
Director, Smithville Fiber
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Ryan knows how to prioritize a complex project in a way that maximizes ROI because he not only understands the technology challenges but also how to align technology to business strategy.
Max Higgins
Business Unit Manager
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Ryan helped us to develop a 5-year roadmap for the transformation for the OSS Business Unit. The Roadmap evaluated products, resources, technologies, processes, partnerships and funding models. This also laid out a vision for us to follow as well as a sequence of priorities over the 5-year timeframe. From a senior management and team perspective this was an invaluable exercise
Owen Tracey
Partner, Kearney
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We engaged PAOSS for their deep subject matter expertise in OSS, networks and telco operations. We were delighted with the way PAOSS worked with, and seamlessly supplemented, our team of experts.
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