Documentation, before or after? (What if scenarios)

“The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day […]

Multi-disciplinary insights

“[AIG’s] Science Team intentionally refrains from using the words “data” or “analytics,” as the team’s capabilities stretch far beyond these two disciplines: behavioral economists, psychologists, engineers, and change management experts work hand-in-hand with data scientists, mathematicians, and statisticians. And for good reason: this multidisciplinary approach is essential to go beyond merely generating new insights from […]

Premature optimisation

“Premature optimization is the root of all evil.” (1) Donald Knuth. I find it interesting that “automation” has become such a common buzz-word in the vernacular of virtualised networking… and OSS for that matter. It seems that it has become one of the primary expectations from any network management project. I can understand that automation should […]

The Trillion-Dollar Treasure Chest

“Integrated operators are sitting on a veritable gold mine. Monetizing passive assets could unlock billions of dollars—enough to wipe out their [traditional telcos’s] entire debt.” Liu, Garg and Bhagat in this article on ATKearney.com. I really recommend taking a close look at the link above. Being an OSS-nerd, this report takes me to a different […]

Augmented Outside Plant – Part 2

In an earlier blog entry, I wrote about using Augmented Reality (AR) to equip field staff with views of physical assets (eg underground, data centre, etc) (and OSS data of course). Well, I’ve just found out that such a product exists from a company called Augview (perhaps there are others I’m unaware of too?). The following […]

Ericsson acquires Ambient

Ericsson completes acquisition of smart grid communications provider, Ambient. Ericsson announced it has completed the acquisition of Ambient Corporation, a US-based award-winning provider of smart grid communications technology for utilities. Ambient’s innovative platform enables utilities to deploy and integrate multiple smart grid applications and technologies, in parallel on a single communications infrastructure. The acquisition increases […]

The Triple Constraint of OSS

“Central to the work of a project manager is balancing competing demands. The term “triple constraint” is a well-known phrase in project management that refers to the competing demands of scope, time, and cost. The manner in which these three demands are balanced affects quality. If one of these factors is affected, at least one […]

Clarity Telecom Selects NetCracker

Clarity Telecom Selects NetCracker Revenue Management for Long-Term Managed Services Agreement. NetCracker Technology announced that Clarity Telecom has agreed to a multi-year, hosted managed services arrangement through which it will leverage NetCracker’s order entry, provisioning, billing and revenue management solutions. The use of these solutions will enable Clarity to support its consumer triple-play service offerings […]

Accenture and Alcatel-Lucent Collaborate

Accenture and Alcatel-Lucent Collaborate to Help Clients Monetize Ultra-Broadband Opportunities. Accenture and Alcatel-Lucent have formed a strategic alliance to help communications service providers (CSPs) and large enterprises implement integrated ultra-broadband solutions to address the challenges of rising costs and increased data consumption caused by high demand from digital customers and applications. The agreement calls for […]

Mobile service assurance

“To offer true, proactive service assurance, mobile operators must monitor three levels of performance. The first is the overall network and service availability – is my network up? Is this service available for subscribers to access? Second is the actual performance of the network – what is the throughput of my network? Is the service […]

Return on Analytics (ROA)

“Return On Investment (ROI) for analytics and business intelligence solutions is increasing and currently delivering on average $13.01 for every dollar spent, according to a new analysis by Nucleus Research. The study analyzes the actual costs and benefits of Nucleus published case studies on individual companies’ analytics deployments.” BusinessWire. Have you ever tried to quantify […]

Dot your API’s and cross your t’s

“And will you succeed? Yes indeed, yes indeed! Ninety-eight and three-quarters percent guaranteed!” Dr. Seuss. Linking keys are an important consideration for cross-referencing disparate data sets. And in OSS you have lots of disparate data sets to pull together. For example, every different NMS, EMS, BSS (and even other OSS tools) create / manage disparate […]

Ericsson to acquire GEOSS

Ericsson announces intention to acquire GEOSS consulting firm. Ericsson announced its intention to acquire GEOSS, an operations support systems (OSS) consulting company based in Germany. The acquisition, which is subject to regulatory approval, further strengthens Ericsson’s already industry-leading position in OSS for communications service providers. Ericsson intends to take over the entire staff and management […]

Telefonica selects Comarch again

Telefonica selects Comarch as the recommended supplier of configuration management, network planning & design for LatAm and Germany. Comarch will support Telefónica in a large transformation aimed at modernizing their networks, operations and OSS. Comarch announced that Telefónica, one of the world’s leading service providers with 316 million customers, selected Comarch as the recommended vendor […]

China Mobile and Gemalto deploy NFC

China Mobile and Gemalto deploy NFC transport in Beijing. Gemalto has been selected by China Mobile to offer its UpTeq NFC Multi-tenant SIMs to protect consumer credentials used for mobile contactless applications?, starting with mass transit services in Beijing. China Mobile is the largest operator in the world with a total subscriber base of close […]

Open source software supportability

“When it comes to software, I much prefer free software, because I have very seldom seen a program that has worked well enough for my needs, and having sources available can be a life-saver.” Linus Torvalds. I recently had an interesting conversation with a very bright young man who is just starting out on his […]

Managing the managed services

“Managed services are one of the areas where CSPs still hold sway because they are able to provide the diversity of voice, date, video, collaboration, etc and geographical coverage that the niche players can’t. As such, this is a very important revenue source to CSPs where their old cash-cows (eg voice, ISDN, etc) are drying […]

Ericsson to acquire Apcera

Ericsson acquires majority stake in enterprise IT cloud company Apcera. Ericsson announced it has agreed to acquire a majority stake in Apcera, a U.S.-based enterprise services company and creator of the next-generation platform as-a-service (PaaS) called Continuum(TM) which works across cloud, on premise and hybrid environments. In addition, Ericsson commits to significant funding toward development […]

Cisco to acquire Metacloud and Memoir

Cisco has announced intent to acquire two organisations: Metacloud: deploys and operates private clouds for global organizations with a unique OpenStack-as-a-Service model that delivers and remotely operates production-ready private clouds in a customer’s data center. Metacloud’s OpenStack-based cloud platform will accelerate Cisco’s strategy to build the world’s largest global Intercloud, a network of clouds, together with […]

NFV Acronyms

Here’s a little cheat-sheet for NFV (Network Function Virtualisation) if you’re suffering DBA (Death By Acronym). I hope you find it useful. The right-most columns refer to the NFV document that each acronym was sourced from, whereby the following links take you to those documents: NFV-001 and NFV-MAN001. Acronym Description NFV-002 NFV-MAN001 ADC Application Delivery […]