Service Models

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” Charles Darwin What service model will be the most successful offering that OSS vendors can make to their CSPs? On-premise? Cloud-based? OSSaaS (OSS as a Service)? Other? Traditionally, on-premise was the stand-out leader. But […]

Everyone is an exception

“There are no exceptions to the rule that everybody likes to be an exception to the rule.” Charles Osgood. When it comes to customer experience management at a CSP, Charles Osgood’s statement rings true. A friend of mine recently talked about the challenge of solution design where “Everyone is an exception.” When it comes to […]

Tribal Knowledge

“We’re able to do that because we really understand what our brand is from a tribal knowledge standpoint. It has been handed down from generation to generation.” Joanne Bischmann There is a tendency for an OSS vendor / integrator to breeze into a customer’s site and dictate the way that the OSS project will be […]

Collaboration

“It is the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” Charles Darwin. Collaboration is a big buzz-word in the ICT industry at the moment. This is largely being driven via improvements in unified communication technologies – voice, video and data converged onto an […]

It’s all about content

“In the end it is subscribers who pay the bills. And subscribers, though often sold on the gadgets and networks technologies powering their favourite services, in the end it is the delivery of the service that matters. Whether they stream or download content over one technology or another isn’t important to them, their main concern […]

Net Promoter Score

“I think we have a gap that we have to close,” he said in response to a question on the OTT threat. “The internet brands I think will become serious competitors for us as an industry and I think can erode our revenue models more than sometimes we appreciate.” He added that telcos needed to change their […]

Improvisation with your OSS

“You can’t plan a script. The beauty of improvisation is you are experiencing it in the moment. If you try to plan what the next line is supposed to be, you’re just going to be disappointed when the other people on stage with you don’t do or say what you want them to do and […]

What would you do differently

“First thing I want to ask you about: Tell me about your results. I never get hard work confused with success. So I’d walk you through the successes, and what did you do right. I’d also ask you to tell me about your failures. And that’s something people make a tremendous mistake on. First, all […]

OSS Vendor for Life

“Any business arrangement that is not profitable to the other person will in the end prove unprofitable for you. The bargain that yields mutual satisfaction is the only one that is apt to be repeated.” B.C.Forbes There are only a relatively small number of customers in OSS as it stands today, although it is increasing […]

Minimise your menu

“I’d like to think I’m a great teacher.” Gordon Ramsay. I’m not a fan of reality TV, but a friend recently pointed out that there was a common theme in Gordon Ramsay’s kitchen makeovers. He always seems to reduce the menu from 30-ish dishes to the 10-ish that can be done well and become the […]

Having fun with OSS

“People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.” Dale Carnegie. Do you have fun wrestling with OctopOSS projects? At a recent OSS networking event a number of us discussed why we were all Passionate About OSS when the consensus was that they are challenging to the point of being infuriating. But […]

Converting wants to needs

“A state arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants.” Plato. Great salespeople have the ability to convert a customer’s wants into genuine needs. When evaluating new OSS products for a CSP, great OSS consultants are able to make connections that the […]

Multiple Clouds

“Although the industry does not yet fully appreciate the challenges and costs of operating in a multi-cloud environment, minimizing integration and operating costs will be a critical success factor. The emergence of an industry standard reference architecture to simplify multi-cloud service management is a priority for the TM Forum and we congratulate Microsoft for their […]

Let’s start with “Sorry”

“By the time the phone rings, there’s already trouble. When that manager is called or this department is reached, it’s because someone is disappointed, angry or stuck. Illness, broken promises or a real urgency have led to this new conversation even taking place.” Seth Godin. Being the OSS guru that you are, have you spent […]

IT meets Telco

“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 is a commonly held belief that telecommunications technologies and […]

Next Generation OSS Limitations

“Each generation goes further than the generation preceding it because it stands on the shoulders of that generation. You will have opportunities beyond anything we’ve ever known.” Ronald Reagan. At any point in time, there will always be a next generation OSS. There will always be new vendors, new products, new services being released by […]

Mergers and Acquisitions

“Much of what is called investment is actually nothing more than mergers and acquisitions, and of course mergers and acquisitions are generally accompanied by downsizing.” Susan George Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) are challenging for their OSS teams on a number of different levels – across technology and personnel. Maintaining business as usual means that all […]

Enterprise Integration

“Our vision of what’s important is exactly the same today, bringing together the best systems and the best software to empower people with rich information solutions.” Bill Gates. Integration, or sharing data, between systems is the key to an OSS providing value-added connections. But how do you go about sharing information between applications? There are four main […]

MVNO Roaming

“A Mobile Virtual Network Operator (“MVNO”) is a company that offers mobile telephone services by reselling the mobile services of another carrier, usually with certain limitations, but at a lower cost. In the U.S., there are MVNOs that resell AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon services at a lower cost than you can obtain service directly […]

How can you replace Art?

“The value of products and services today is based more and more on creativity — the innovative ways that they take advantage of new materials, technologies, and processes. Value creation in the past was a function of economies of industrial scale: mass production and the high efficiency of repeatable tasks. Value creation in the future […]