If you found this article useful or valuable, subscribe (in the top-right corner of this page) and share. Let's spread the word and inspire more people to become passionate about OSS. Ryan is Passionate About OSS and has dedicated the last two decades to sharing his passion for OSS with the world. He is a founder, author, blogger, Engineer, connector and inquisitive learner about OSS and managing networks. To find out a little about his back-story and why he's so Passionate About OSS, click on the About Page. To connect with Ryan and the PAOSS team, click on the Contact page.
“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.” Socrates. Further to yesterday’s post, why is it that almost everyone I have met in the world of OSS is busy now and has a backlog of incomplete activities piled up to the roof? Why have I averaged 80 hour weeks for months at a time and still […]
“Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong.” Donald Porter. I only recently heard a saying that is apparently commonplace – “No wrong doors.” It wasn’t immediately apparent what it meant. In effect, it means that if a customer asks you a question then you […]
“You can have data without information, but you cannot have information without data.” Daniel Keys Moran. OSS technologies will undergo changes from any number of directions in coming years and disruptive approaches will undoubtedly morph OSS from their current form. Irrespective of this evolution, we can simplify. The reason that OSS are relevant now and […]
“If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.” Jim Barksdale. I was discussing performance reporting with a friend yesterday and he made a simple, yet profound statement that I agreed with wholeheartedly. When it comes to performance reporting, it’s not the information presentation that is […]
“What revenue model should I use? = the wrong question to ask. Why will people pay me? = the right question“ The Board of Innovation. There are so many different revenue models in OSS that there are no simple apples-for-apples comparisons on price. There are perpetual licenses, annual licenses, processor-based licensing, node-based licensing, named user […]
“I have a lot to learn about NASCAR. But I’ve learned if you have the right people in the right places doing the right things, you can be successful at whatever you do.” Roger Staubach During a vendor presentation, you will almost always see the “NASCAR page” in their promotional material. It’s the page where […]
Well, it’s been a long time coming, but I’ve finally updated the Vendors / Products page. Who have I missed? What other details would you like to see in the table?
“You always want to win. That is why you play tennis, because you love the sport and try to be the best you can at it.” Roger Federer. In my opinion it is important to strive to be a tripod if you’re in the OSS industry. It’s vitally important to be competent with Telco networks, […]
“In most companies, the formal hierarchy is a matter of public record – it’s easy to discover who’s in charge of what. By contrast, natural leaders don’t appear on any organization chart.” Gary Hamel. In making the decision to take on a major new OSS project there is normally a significant hierarchy of individuals involved. […]
“Reactance occurs when a person feels that someone or something is taking away his or her choices or limiting the range of alternatives.” Wikipedia. There is a tendency for an OSS vendor to arrive on site as THE expert in all things OSS and start telling the customer all about the changes it HAS TO […]
“Accept that not all of the smart people work at your company.” Stefan Lindegaard. Have a willingness to seek ideas from outside your organisation. OSS is too diverse to have all aspects covered by in-house experts. OSS are all about making valuable connections. Sometimes you may need outside help to find those valuable connections. Where […]
“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” Albert Einstein. As this blog often states, an OSS exists to provide valuable insights into the operation of a network. In the world of OSS, Einstein is partly right. It certainly does require imagination to make an insightful connection between data sets that nobody has […]
“You can learn new things at any time in your life if you’re willing to be a beginner. If you actually learn to like being a beginner, the whole world opens up to you.” Barbara Sher. In the previous post we talked about the best place to use your linchpins. In today’s post we look […]
“The indispensable employee brings humanity and connection and art to her organization. She is the key player, the one who’s difficult to live without, the person you can build something around. The indispensable employee – I call her/him a linchpin – is a person who’s worth finding and keeping” Seth Godin. Linchpins or tripods are […]
“Customer satisfaction is worthless. Customer loyalty is priceless.” Jeffrey Gitomer. Okay, so you’ve built an OSS, you’ve delivered loads of training and you’ve worked your way through UAT (User Acceptance Testing), achieving great feedback from the customer along the way. But now the customer takes over the reins. Are they ready? Are they able to […]
“Spend a lot of time talking to customers face to face. You’d be amazed how many companies don’t listen to their customers.” Ross Perot. When it comes to OSS, your answers are out with the customers rather than back in the office. Relationships, trust and true understanding of customer needs (and problems) only happens by […]
““Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated..” Confucius. As technologists, we all have a tendency to speak in jargon with our peers. Having worked on OSS projects in many countries, I’ve been amazed at how different the OSS jargon is within our industry, within different companies and even by different groups […]
“I don’t look at myself as a commodity, but I’m sure a lot of people have.” Marilyn Monroe Will there be a time in the not too distant future where traditional telco services become a pure commodity? For example, will users simply plug into socket in their wall and get ubiquitous bandwidth / cloud services […]
“People usually act for their own reasons, not someone else’s reasons. If they do change a behavior because of something someone else has said, most of the time that change won’t stick. The secret of Instant Influence is that it helps people discover their own reasons for doing something, even something they thought they didn’t […]
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943. Are OSS going to go the same way as the computers of Watson’s time? Rather than being the centre of an organisation’s network management universe, will they become smaller and more distributed? Current OSS tend to be relatively […]
