The OSS transformation dilemma

There’s a particular carrier that I know quite well that appears to despise a particular OSS vendor… but keeps coming back to them… and keeps getting let down by them… but keeps coming back to them. And I’m not just talking about support of their existing OSS, but whole new tools. It never made sense […]

Are we making our OSS lives easier?

As an implementer of OSS, what’s the single factor that makes it challenging for us to deliver on any of the three constraints of project delivery? Complexity. Or put another way, variants. The more variants, the less chance we have of delivering on time, cost or functionality. So let me ask you, is our next […]

From PoC to OSS sandpit

You all know I’m a fan of training operators in OSS sandpits (and as apprenticeships during the build phase) rather than a week or two of classroom training at the end of a project. To reduce the re-work in building a sandpit environment, which will probably be a dev/test environment rather than a production environment, […]

Post Implementation Review (PIR)

Have you noticed that OSS projects need to go through extensive review to get funding of business cases? That makes sense. They tend to be a big investment after all. Many OSS projects fail, so we want to make sure this one doesn’t and we perform thorough planing / due-diligence. But I do find it […]

OSS – just in time rather than just in case

We all know that once installed, OSS tend to stay in place for many years. Too much effort to air-lift in. Too much effort to air-lift back out, especially if tightly integrated over time. The monolithic COTS (off-the-shelf) tools of the past would generally be commissioned and customised during the initial implementation project, with occasional […]

ONF executes new Strategic Plan

ONF Hits The Ground Running with Execution of New Strategic Plan. Providing an update to its previously announced strategic plan aimed at creating a robust supply chain for open source solutions for operators, the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) today announced key milestones achieved. The achievements include the formation of the Technical Leadership Team (TLT), finalization on the initial […]

Would you ever alarm your lab equipment?

Something curious dawned on me the other day – I wondered how many people / organisations actively manage alarms / alerts being generated by their lab equipment? At first glance, this would seem silly. Lab environments are in constant flux, in all sorts of semi-configured situations, and therefore likely to be alarming their heads off […]

An OSS doomsday scenario

If I start talking about doomsday scenarios where the global OSS job industry is decimated, most people will immediately jump to the conclusion that I’m predicting an artificial intelligence (AI) takeover. AI could have a role to play, but is not a key facet of the scenario I’m most worried about. You’d think that OSS […]

The OSS MoSCoW requirement prioritisation technique

Since the soccer World Cup is currently taking place in Russia, I thought I’d include reference to the MoSCoW technique in today’s blog. It could be used as part of your vendor selection processes for the purpose of OSS requirement prioritisation. “The term MoSCoW itself is an acronym derived from the first letter of each […]

The OSS dart-board analogy

“The dartboard, by contrast, is not remotely logical, but is somehow brilliant. The 20 sector sits between the dismal scores of five and one. Most players aim for the triple-20, because that’s what professionals do. However, for all but the best darts players, this is a mistake. If you are not very good at darts, […]

Using OSS machine learning to predict backwards not forwards

There’s a lot of excitement about what machine-led decisioning can introduce into the world of network operations, and rightly so. Excitement about predictions, automation, efficiency, optimisation, zero-touch assurance, etc. There are so many use-cases that disruptors are proposing to solve using Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and the like. I might have even been […]

The OSS farm equipment analogy

It’s an interesting season as we come up to the EOFY (end of financial year – on 30 June). Budget cycles are coming to an end. At organisations that don’t carry un-spent budgets into the next financial year, the looming EOFY triggers a use-it-or-lose-it mindset. In some cases, organisations are almost forced to allocate funds […]

Did we forget the OSS operating model?

When we have a big OSS transformation to undertake, we tend to start with the use cases / requirements, work our way through the technical solution and build up an implementation plan before delivering it (yes, I’ve heavily reduced the real number of steps there!). However, we sometimes overlook the organisational change management part. That’s […]

Microsoft to acquire GitHub

Microsoft to acquire GitHub for $7.5 billion. Microsoft Corp. announced it has reached an agreement to acquire GitHub, the world’s leading software development platform where more than 28 million developers learn, share and collaborate to create the future. Together, the two companies will empower developers to achieve more at every stage of the development lifecycle, […]

1.045 Trillion reasons to re-consider your OSS strategy

“The global Internet of Things (IoT) market will be worth $1.1 trillion in revenue by 2025 as market value shifts from connectivity to platforms, applications and services. By that point, there will be more than 25 billion IoT connections (cellular and non-cellular), driven largely by growth in the industrial IoT market. The Asia Pacific region […]

The paint the fence automation analogy

There are so many actions that could be automated by / with / in our OSS. It can be hard to know where to start can’t it? One approach is to look at where the largest amounts of manual effort is being expended by operators. Another way is to employ the “paint the fence” analogy. […]

How economies of unscale change the OSS landscape

“For more than a century, economies of scale made the corporation an ideal engine of business. But now, a flurry of important new technologies, accelerated by artificial intelligence (AI), is turning economies of scale inside out. Business in the century ahead will be driven by economies of unscale, in which the traditional competitive advantages of […]

OSS / BSS security getting a little cloudy

“Many systems are moving beyond simple virtualization and are being run on dynamic private or even public clouds. CSPs will migrate many to hybrid clouds because of concerns about data security and regulations on where data are stored and processed. We believe that over the next 15 years, nearly all software systems will migrate to […]

A new phenomenon for IT

“In the past, business-oriented groups have had ideas about what they want to do and then they come to us… Now, they want to know what technology can bring to the table and then they’ll work on the business plan. So there’s a big gap here. It’s a phenomenon that’s been happening in the last […]

Dematerialisation of OSS

“In 1972, the Club of Rome in its report The Limits to Growth predicted a steadily increasing demand for material as both economies and populations grew. The report predicted that continually increasing resource demand would eventually lead to an abrupt economic collapse. Studies on material use and economic growth show instead that society is gaining […]