How budget and mindset shapes OSS procurement differently for T1 and T2 carriers

Large carriers (let’s call them T1’s) tend to approach OSS procurement projects very differently from small to medium sized carriers (let’s call them T2’s). This is mostly driven by budget, or more to the point, how the budget frames the thinking. We’ll also show you how drawing on ideas from the T2 approach can actually […]

Telco innovation: 13 examples of harnessing OSS for super-charged experimentation

We know the modern digital marketplace is evolving and proliferating at mind-blowing speeds. Everything you know right now, and all the knowledge you have collected over your career, is diminishing in relevance at an increasing rate. The same is true of us as individuals as well as us as the telco industry and the companies […]

What’s your OSS Linda Evangelista Number?

Linda Evangelista, a supermodel back in the day, was famously quoted as saying, “I don’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day.” When conducting vendor selection processes with my clients, I tend to find the “OSS Linda Evangelista number” quite helpful. It’s the minimum dollar amount that a vendor will be prepared […]

Two new products to help you kick-start your next OSS project

There’s only one way that OSS and BSS can get better – clients need to invest in them, which in turn convinces vendors to invest in product development. There’s a simple sequence of events: The demonstrable delivery of value by OSS to an organisation, which Justifies the allocation of budget to your organisation’s OSS, and […]

Network Resilience Engineering: The Role of Operational Support Systems (OSS)

Operational Support Systems (OSS) perform many business-critical functions for network operators, as shown in the diagram below. They are the connectors and the profit engine behind any communications network. As indicated above, the assurance flows help to retain revenues and customers. OSS are an insurance policy for a telco’s brand, or at least the technology […]

Crossing the Chasm: How to avoid flip-flopping between OSS products and services models

Are you familiar with Geoffrey Moore’s famous, “Crossing the Chasm” concept from his book of the same name? It basically describes the large gap between early adoption of a product and getting it to mainstream utilisation. With the large amount of fragmentation in the OSS/BSS market, there are clearly many products that haven’t been able […]

The one person, two day, OSS challenge

For all of the OSS and BSS vendors out there, I’d like to issue you a challenge. Can one person who’s not yet familiar with your solution (but has pre-requisite skills) set up your OSS / BSS product and demonstrate your product’s most essential use-cases with their own data / configurations and then demo to […]

Telco’s burning exchange moment – a playbook of fixes

The previous article in this series, “Telecommunications has reached its burning exchange moment,” highlighted that the current telco business model is at risk. It described how we could be experiencing an era of creative destruction of capital based on the works of Schumpeter and Marx. It also described: Poll results where nearly half of Europe’s […]

Telecommunications has reached its burning exchange moment

I’ll start this article with an apology – for crossing into the world of politics. An important basis of the discussion comes from the concept of creative destruction of capital and references quotes from Karl Marx. I have no interest in politics, especially historical politics, so I have little awareness of what the groundswell of […]

Want to know where the next wave of OSS/BSS innovation is coming from?

Everything you know right now, and all the knowledge you have collected over your career, is diminishing in relevance at an increasing rate. For those of us who’ve been in this game for decades rather than years, a lot of the knowledge we accumulated during our “apprenticeship” years is losing its lustre. This is particularly […]

Sometimes an OSS budget is too big

Wait, “What??” I hear you ask! No it can’t. Have you ever worked on a BIG OSS project? One where the budget is in the hundreds of millions of dollars? Or even tens of millions of dollars? Have those big projects delivered your best transformation outcomes? Or have other projects, with more constrained budgets, been […]

The Pain. The Burning Ring of Fire. How to get OSS Projects unstuck and approved

When speaking with a customer last week, I was hearing the same expression of anguish that I’ve heard so many times before. The anguish of getting an OSS business case approved. Actually, in this rare case, the business case had already been approved.  The budget had been allocated long ago. The exec sponsors were onboard […]

Is innovationism, not capitalism, driving the decline in telco?

It’s a completely silly question to ask you whether you’ve noticed that the world of OSS is changing rapidly isn’t it? Of course you’ve already noticed that it has and is. Do you already have plans to learn new concepts to help you adapt to those changes in 2023? If so, are you thinking about […]

A seismic shift is happening

A seismic shift is happening that will change the world of OSS/BSS so fundamentally in the next few years that it totally blows my mind. It will be the biggest in my 20+ year career in the telco industry. The following pic is from an IA Summit Keynote by Charles Lamanna, the Corporate VP of […]

Automation at the 5G Network Edge

Thought I’d share some information about a 5G Edge Automation project I’ve been assisting with in recent months – in collaboration with luminaries such as EnterpriseWeb (project lead), KX, Intel, Keysight, Tech Mahindra, Red Hat and Fortinet. KX has just shared a blog article, which includes the following quote that helps to summarise why I’m really […]

There’s no competition for OSS cookbooks making food out of soccer balls

Seth Godin recently wrote a brilliant article that describes the craziness of seeking a market with no competition. In entirety, his article goes like this: “There’s no competition for cookbooks on making food out of soccer balls and hockey pucks. There’s no competition for software that charges you to find out the temperature on Mars. There’s no […]

The most addictive drug in OSS

I’ve spent the last 22-ish years working on OSS and even longer on telco projects. Most of that time has involved way more than the typical 40 hour work week (often more than double). But the amazing thing is that it’s (almost) never felt like it. Time has almost always seemed to fly by so […]