As some of you will have spotted in past articles, I've spent the last couple of years working with solutions at the intersection of OSS/BSS (data) and AR/VR for visualisations and new ways of working. A couple of animated GIFs from that work are shown below. An interactive 3D model with assets identified from OSS / inventory data. An AR projection of a tower onto…
Read More »Are you familiar with Geoffrey Moore's famous, "Crossing the Chasm" concept from his book of the same name? It basically describes the large gap between early adoption of a product and getting it to mainstream utilisation. With the large amount of fragmentation in the OSS/BSS market, there are clearly many products that haven't been able to leap across to widespread utilisation yet. But that's not what…
Read More »Of all technological advancements, smartphones have had one of the most profound impacts on humanity in recent history. They have ingeniously monetised "idle time," the brief intermissions between our important tasks, often filling our idle moments with a plethora of addictive apps, content and social media. However, as technology has evolved, these "idle time" tasks have addictively and increasingly encroached upon our dedicated attention spans, often…
Read More »In the last year, I've seen RFP responses worth an accumulated total of well over $1B for network services, systems and such. In almost every case, the carrier buyers have indicated that they're seeking innovative solutions. That's the outward-facing commentary at least. But the real, inward-facing story is that they're just seeking cost-reductions in most cases. In one example, I knew of a telco that issued…
Read More »OSS solutions hold a privileged place in the operations of communications service providers around the world. They collect logs and events from network devices, security devices, shared services (like Active Directory) and other support systems. With increased automation and orchestration, they also have the power to quickly push controls back into all of those devices and systems. "With great power comes great responsibility" Wired has shared, The…
Read More »When it comes to telco / OSS / BSS data, I'm a big believer in matching the type of database to the type of data you're handling. For alarms / events / logs, it's time-series databases, where KX is a stand-out. For network inventory-based use-cases, graph databases like Neo4j provide some significant advantages. If you're in Melbourne next Tuesday (9th of May, 2023), I'd like to invite you to…
Read More »Have you ever heard of the concept of a project pre-mortem? Have you ever used the concept on one of your OSS projects? They can be a really useful technique to use prior to embarking on OSS projects. But what are they and how do you use them I can hear you asking. Think of it as projecting forward and you're doing a project post-mortem when…
Read More »Have you ever stopped to wonder who actually uses OSS and BSS tools? Or how many role types (personas) do you think interact with OSS/BSS? Then, to go a step further, have you ever wondered what they do with their OSS and BSS tools? This was an itch we just had to scratch, so we decided to prepare a list of both, cross-linked, in one spreadsheet.…
Read More »For all of the OSS and BSS vendors out there, I'd like to issue you a challenge. Can one person who's not yet familiar with your solution (but has pre-requisite skills) set up your OSS / BSS product and demonstrate your product's most essential use-cases with their own data / configurations and then demo to colleagues within two days? [Speaking of use-cases, I've just put the…
Read More »The previous article in this series, "Telecommunications has reached its burning exchange moment," highlighted that the current telco business model is at risk. It described how we could be experiencing an era of creative destruction of capital based on the works of Schumpeter and Marx. It also described: Poll results where nearly half of Europe's telco CEOs don't expect their businesses to make it through the…
Read More »I'll start this article with an apology - for crossing into the world of politics. An important basis of the discussion comes from the concept of creative destruction of capital and references quotes from Karl Marx. I have no interest in politics, especially historical politics, so I have little awareness of what the groundswell of feeling might be around this famous figure in human history. I…
Read More »Are you an OSS and/or BSS supplier or telecommunications company that is thinking about seeking external investment or selling (in the sense of M&A [Mergers and Acquisitions], not the normal products and services you sell)? In recent years, we've been involved in an increased number of M&A projects, and I'm assuming this mirrors a rise in the amount of OSS/BSS M&A that's happening in the market…
Read More »Everything you know right now, and all the knowledge you have collected over your career, is diminishing in relevance at an increasing rate. For those of us who've been in this game for decades rather than years, a lot of the knowledge we accumulated during our "apprenticeship" years is losing its lustre. This is particularly true of technical knowledge as new waves of technology arrive like…
Read More »As the title asks, do you know what the most widely used OSS/BSS application is? The answer might actually surprise you, but we'll get to that a little later in the article. Late last year, we published an article that outlined that a A seismic shift is already underway in IT circles and how it will fundamentally change OSS/BSS product designs. The article built upon concepts…
Read More »Did you notice that our previous article (What does the future hold for telco?) touched on scarcity and abundance in telco as well as how the dynamics of those are changing? Have you ever stopped to think how these changing dynamics of scarcity / abundance might impact the business and revenue models of yourself personally or your companies in the future? Let's have a look at…
Read More »Do you ever look into the past to determine whether commonalities / discrepancies could be used to inform how you might act into the future? When it comes to OSS/BSS and telco, I certainly do. I hark back into the days when CSPs were the world’s leading tech companies and innovators. They also had incredibly profitable business models throughout the 1900s. That world of telco has…
Read More »What's your Everest? I was out doing a walk today and listening to a podcast (Jeff Lerner's "Unlock your Potential" with guest Colin O'Brady [episode #226]) and that question stopped me in my tracks (literally). What's that big ambition, that big goal that you've always wanted to achieve? I don't have the answer to that question now and thinking back, am not sure I've ever had that one…
Read More »Wait, "What??" I hear you ask! No it can't. Have you ever worked on a BIG OSS project? One where the budget is in the hundreds of millions of dollars? Or even tens of millions of dollars? Have those big projects delivered your best transformation outcomes? Or have other projects, with more constrained budgets, been your more successful ones? Big budgets come with big ambitions. Lots…
Read More »When speaking with a customer last week, I was hearing the same expression of anguish that I've heard so many times before. The anguish of getting an OSS business case approved. Actually, in this rare case, the business case had already been approved. The budget had been allocated long ago. The exec sponsors were onboard weeks ago too. The business case had been given the green-light.…
Read More »There were plenty of search engines before Google came along and grabbed a lot of the search market share. There were plenty of generative AI solutions before ChatGPT appeared and created a large amount of buzz too. The question is why did they grab attention / users and what can we learn from that to apply to OSS solutions? Search User Interface and User Experience This…
Read More »Just a word of warning. This article is quite long. However, it contains a message that I feel really strongly about.... as you'll see. Change is a funny thing. Sometimes we love it. Sometimes we hate it. Sometimes we're inspired by it. Sometimes we're in fear of it. Sometimes we know we desperately need to change, but still can't bring ourselves to do anything about it. The…
Read More »