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The following is a set of user stories I’ve provided to TM Forum to help with their current Autonomous Networking initiative. They’re just an initial discussion point for others to riff off. We’d love to get your comments, additions and recommended refinements too. As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Automatically maintain the […]
At Passionate About OSS, we’re lucky enough to count the utilities market as an important part of our client base. This probably puts us in a very small percentage of OSS exponents that work across OSS for telco and utilities. Utilities have a number of interesting and unique nuances compared with other OSS markets. Starting […]
You’ve all probably seen this scene from the Tom Hanks movie, Apollo 13 right? But you’re probably wondering what it has to do with OSS? Well, this scene came to mind when I was preparing a list of user stories required to facilitate Autonomous Networking. More specifically, to the use-case where we want the Autonomous […]
I must’ve written dozens of posts about us needing to collectively invest a lot more effort into UI / UX. I’ve written quite a few over the last few months especially. This one in particular springs to mind. As an industry, we typically don’t do user experience journeys (UX) or user interfaces (UI) very well […]
A slightly left-field thought dawned on me the other day and I’d like to hear your thoughts on it. We all know that almost all telemetry coming out of our networks is time-stamped. Events, syslogs, metrics, etc. That makes perfect sense because we look for time-based ripple-out effects when trying to diagnose issues. But therefore […]
In yesterday’s post, we talked about what needs to happen for a network operator to build an autonomous network. Many of the factors extended beyond the direct control of the OSS stack. We also looked at the difference between designing network autonomy for an existing OSS versus a ground-up build of an autonomous network. We […]
….I want to make my network so observable, reliable, predictable and repeatable that I don’t need anyone to operate it. That’s clearly a highly ambitious goal. Probably even unachievable if we say it doesn’t need anyone to run it. But I wonder whether this has to be the starting point we take on behalf of […]
“For those starting out in product, here’s a tip: Design, Defaults*, Documentation, Details and Delivery really matter in software.”Jeetu Patel here. * Note that you can interpret “Defaults” to be Out-Of-The-Box functionality offered by the product. Let’s break those 5 D-words down and describe why they really matter to the OSS industry shall we? Design […]
In last Tuesday’s post, I asked the community here on PAOSS and on TM Forum’s Engage platform for ideas about how you would benchmark complexity. I also provided a reference to an old post that described the concept of a NSS (Net Simplicity Score) for our OSS/BSS. Due to the complexity of factors that contribute to […]
It seems that OSS/BSS are always an afterthought. And always seen as a cost centre rather than a revenue generator. Now I’m biased of course, but I think that’s such a narrow view. And we need everyone in our industry to spread the same gospel. I like to think of it like this… Sales teams […]
I’d love to ask you an important question… how do we benchmark OSS/BSS complexity? To measure how complex our systems are and therefore provide a signpost for simplification. A colleague has opined that the number of apps in a stack could be used a proxy. I can see where he’s going with that, but I […]
There’s an old adage that “the confused mind always says no.” Consider this from your own perspective. If you’re in a state of confusion about something, are you likely to commit wholeheartedly or will you look to delay / procrastinate? The paradox for digital transformation is that our projects are almost always complex, but complexity […]
In Monday’s article, we suggested that the three technical factors that could get the big boss fired are probably only limited to: Repeated and/or catastrophic failure (of network, systems, etc) Inability to serve the market (eg offerings, capacity, etc) Inability to operate network assets profitably In that article, we looked closely at a human factor […]
In Monday’s article, we suggested that the three technical factors that could get the big boss fired are probably only limited to: Repeated and/or catastrophic failure (of network, systems, etc) Inability to serve the market (eg offerings, capacity, etc) Inability to operate network assets profitably In that article, we looked closely at a human factor […]
In Monday’s article, we suggested that the three technical factors that could get the big boss fired are probably only limited to: Repeated and/or catastrophic failure (of network, systems, etc) Inability to serve the market (eg offerings, capacity, etc) Inability to operate network assets profitably In that article, we looked closely at a human factor […]
Not sure whether you have a clear answer to that question – either the thought is enticing (you want the CEO to get fired), unthinkable (you don’t want the CEO fired) or somewhere in between. You’d invariably get different answers from different employees within most organisations (you can’t please all of the people all of […]
I’m currently reading a book entitled, “Jony Ive. The genius behind Apple’s greatest products.” I’d like to share a paragraph with you from it (and probably expect a few more in coming days): “…Apple’s internal culture heavily favored the engineers within the product groups. The design process was engineering driven. In the early days of […]
When I first started the Passionate About OSS site / blog many years ago, I was lucky to get a handful of views per day. It’s grown by many multiples since then, fortunately. The launch of The Blue Book OSS/BSS Vendor Directory generated some exciting metrics yesterday. The directory alone came within 5 pageviews of […]
We’re excited to announce that “The Blue Book OSS/BSS Vendor Directory” has officially gone live here at https://passionateaboutoss.com/directory It provides a comprehensive directory of over 400 suppliers that produce OSS, BSS and/or related network management tools. Company details, product details and functionality classifications are included. Every network operator has a unique set of needs from […]
We’ve spoken at length about TM Forum’s, “Time to kill the RFP? Reinventing IT procurement for the 2020s,” report so far this week. We’ve also spoken about the feeling that the OSS/BSS RFP (Request For Proposal) still has relevance in some situations… as long as it’s more of a lighter-touch than most. We’ve spoken about […]
