First impressions
“We don’t know where our first impressions come from or precisely what they mean, so we don’t always appreciate their fragility.” Malcolm Gladwell. They say that first impressions are lasting. Apple knows this and invests greatly in their first impressions, their packaging. I’m no great devotee of Apple, but I was certainly wowed by the […]
Getting off the island
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent..” John Donne. Just as no man is an island, no CSP is an island since they all rely on connections with other providers (and customers for that matter). Carriers will rely on network links or asset sharing with other […]
QoOSSS (Quality of OSS Service)
“A communications network forms the backbone of any successful organization. These networks transport a multitude of applications and data, including high-quality video and delay-sensitive data such as real-time voice. The bandwidth-intensive applications stretch network capabilities and resources, but also complement, add value, and enhance every business process. Networks must provide secure, predictable, measurable, and sometimes […]
Convergence of OSS
“Seriously, we are in the midst of the convergence of voice and data and that is challenging the infrastructure of the telephone companies. There are huge commercial interests in the basic technology, but even more so in content delivery and control of content.” Steve Crocker. It’s important for a CSP to develop a convergent data […]
Crnogorski Telekom Deploys NetCracker’s OSS
Crnogorski Telekom Deploys NetCracker’s OSS Solution to Streamline Fulfillment and Accelerate Time-to-Market NetCracker Technology announced that it has successfully implemented its OSS solution for Crnogorski Telekom, the Deutsche Telekom Group operating unit based in Montenegro. NetCracker’s OSS Solution, which has been chosen as the DT group OSS standard, will help Crnogorski Telekom to achieve aggressive […]
A Customer’s Experience part 2
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” Peter Drucker. In yesterday’s blog we discussed the trend of carrier’s focussing on Customer Experience Management, specifically the results of a Comarch study on mobility carriers. There are so many aspects of CEM […]
Lightpath Deploys NetCracker’s BSS/OSS
Lightpath Deploys NetCracker’s BSS/OSS Solution Suite NetCracker Technology announced that Lightpath, which provides Ethernet-based communication solutions for New York metropolitan area businesses, has deployed its BSS/OSS solution suite. By leveraging NetCracker’s next-generation OSS, Lightpath has streamlined operations and enhanced automation. “The entire Lightpath organization is focused on providing the best experience we can for our […]
A Customer Experience Survey
“Every operator in the industry will argue emphatically that the experience customers have of their service is crucial to their ongoing sucess. As operators’ offerings become increasingly homogenised, and price-based competition ever more difficult to sustain, operators are embracing Customer Experience Management (CEM) as a key differentiator. But just how much of what we hear […]
My heart beats for you
“Genius takes time, but stupidity can be achieved in a heart beat, and usually is.” Anonymous. There are many network devices that have the ability to publish data at intervals in time, or upon the incidence of an event occurring. An example might be a network device failure sending a notification to its element manager […]
Tear it all down
“If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.” Abraham Lincoln. Flow-through provisioning is a wonderful thing. It usually takes a lot of effort to design the data model so that all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle line up for each and every new service provisioned by your awesome product. […]
Designing Device Interfaces
“As consumers we are incredibly discerning. We sense where has been great care in the design, and when there is cynicism and greed.” Jonathan Ive. Over the years, I’ve created interface specifications for many devices, element managers and network managers (NE/EMS/NMS). Some have been very easy to figure out. Others have been highly complex. Today, […]
Selling picks to the gold miners
“Gold was discovered in California in of 1848. By May of 1848 reports were stating there is more gold in them there hills that all the people in California could take out in fifty years.” A man called Samuel Brannan opened his small store at John Sutter’s Fort, right in the heart of the gold […]
No more network data synch? (part 2)
“Sometimes you are in sync with the times, sometimes you are in advance, sometimes you are late.” Bernardo Bertolucci. Yesterday we spoke of the OSS of the future not having an offline database that needs to be synchronised against network assets regularly. As we all know, data synch is one of the banes of an […]
CSGi to acquire Volubill assets
CSG International to Acquire Key Volubill Assets CSG International, Inc., a global provider of interactive transaction-driven solutions and services, announced that it has purchased key assets of Volubill, a leading supplier of integrated real-time policy and charging solutions to mobile, satellite, and fixed broadband operators. Volubill products, which are used by service providers globally to […]
NetCracker Transforms Israel’s yes Satellite TV
NetCracker Transforms BSS and Enhances Content Delivery for Israel’s yes Satellite TV NetCracker Technology announced that Israeli direct broadcast satellite provider yes has implemented its Billing, Rating, and CRM solutions to improve customer interactions, accelerate speed-to-market for complex service bundles and promotions, and support new forms of content delivery and transactions across a variety of […]
No more network data synch?
“The agendas on the management side of the table now are not in sync like they used to be because you have vastly different entities supplying programming to networks.” Dick Wolf It’s funny how that quote sounds so relevant to network management platforms on software-defined networks yet has nothing to do with it. But I […]
Outside plant data synch
“Passivity is fatal to us.” Mao Zedong. In a blog written a year ago today, we discussed some of the challenges in maintaining data synchronisation from your outside plant, your passive network, your pits, pipes and cables, because they have no programmatic interface. Without the mechanism for automated feedback via a programmatic interface, the CSP […]
Which line are you chasing?
“Money is not the most important thing in the world. Love is. Fortunately, I love money.” Jackie Mason. Whether you’re with an integrator or are a CSP’s employee, there’s one* basic question to ask yourself when starting on a new OSS: Is your OSS assisting the CSP with their top line (revenues) or bottom line […]
Slice and dice 2
“The more restrictions you have, the easier anything is to write.” Stephen Sondheim. In an earlier post, we discussed the importance placed on permissions in an OSS. We talked of the slice and dice analogy of being able to segregate data by function and operational group and how difficult this can be for many OSS, […]
Virtualisation meets Big Data
“When a match has equal partners then I fear not.” Aeschylus. The major OSS of the nineties and noughties can be categorised as centralised, structured (ie built on relational databases and modelling connection-oriented services) and not-quite-realtime. I envisage the next generation will be distributed, unstructured (ie virtualised and with rapid shifts in data sources) and […]