"It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them." Steve Jobs. The quote above is highly relevant for Steve Jobs' target audience, which was a mass-market retail model where it's simply not viable to design custom solutions for ever customer. The OSS market is vastly different, as there are far…
Read More »"It started with ‘What incredible benefits can we give to the customer…Where can we take the customer?’ Not starting with ‘Let’s sit down with the engineers and figure out what awesome technology we have and how we’re going to market that.’" Steve Jobs. Do you exactly know who uses your OSS (not which customers, but which of the customer's representatives use it)? Do you know what…
Read More »Because telcos’ business has become a lot more challenging in recent years, largely because of the OTT players, their way of sourcing equipment is changing. No longer do they simply write an RFP, which leads to a contract and then deployment, said Paul Scanlan, president of Huawei’s business and network consulting group. Paul's group, which has expanded from 200 staff in 2012 to 500 staff with…
Read More »"The traditional business model of utility companies is under threat, with a new approach needed to ensure future success." EY's "Business Pulse: Exploring the dual perspectives of the top 10 risks and opportunities in 2013 and beyond." Whilst the OSS technologies remain more or less the same, the business imperatives for an OSS are quite different between CSPs and utilities. The above-mentioned report provides the following four…
Read More »"Doesn't this [NFV] pose a problem for organizations whose communications skill sets are all tied up in maintaining OSS? The two technologies are not compatible; NFV is designed to replace traditional OSS, not provide a comfortable transition path." Scott M. Fulton, III on Fierce Enterprise Communications. I'd like to throw this over to you dear audience. Does your detailed knowledge of NFV (and OSS) lead you to…
Read More »"I first met him… at a dinner my mother had put together. On my way there, I thought, ‘Why would I want to meet this guy who picks stocks?’ I thought he just used various market-related things—like volume, or how the price had changed over time—to make his decisions. But when we started talking that day, he didn’t ask me about any of those things. Instead…
Read More »Clarity assets sold and subsequently placed into administration. Following an announcement to the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) on 24 June 2014 that Clarity OSS Limited and its secured creditor (CPS Group Investments Pty Ltd) had entered into an agreement to sell most of the Clarity Group's assets to the Australian subsidiary of a US quoted corporation, this sale was finalised on 3 July 2014. On 4…
Read More »"If there is to be reconciliation, first there must be truth." Timothy B. Tyson. There are two main categories of billing: Metering Charging In the case of metering, this is the measurement of actual usage of communication services. An example would be the flagfall upon setup of a telephone call and an additional cost per second/minute that the phone conversation lasts. Metering statistics are derived from…
Read More »"Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change - this is the rhythm of living." Bruce Barton. I have a really left-field idea to run past you today. I'd love your thoughts about its feasibility (or lack of!). During a major incident (eg alarm storm, security attack, etc) your network health visualisation tools tend to clog up... the scrolling screen of death... where too…
Read More »"Children have more need of models than of critics." Carolyn Coats. OSS covers a huge range of skills, activities, domains, business functions, etc. I've met some absolute geniuses in the field of OSS, but I've never met someone who is a genius at every aspect. As such, I'd like to tweak Carolyn Coats's comments thus, "OSS exponents have more need of models than of critics." It's…
Read More »"Never walk away from failure. On the contrary, study it carefully and imaginatively for its hidden assets." Michael Korda. Working on OctopOSS projects can be a humbling experience. There are so many tentacles that can whack you and your colleagues over the back of the head. Every project seems to have its own tentacles. Sometimes it's only small elements of a project that fail and can…
Read More »Elitecore bags 3 new orders from Multi Service Cable Operators, Deploys Integrated Real time Billing, Charging & Policy Control Solution. Elitecore Technologies, a leading provider of Integrated Policy, Charging, Billing and Revenue Management solution announces three Cable MSOs (Multi-System Operators) wins for Pay TV and Broadband services; setting up a strong footprint in Asia Pacific Cable market. Elitecore will offer a complete pre-integrated as well as…
Read More »"In the struggle between capital and labor, more often than not capital has won, because the real source of value for most companies has historically been the hard assets that they owned and controlled." James Surowiecki. Yesterday we spoke of the different types of interface "objects" such as probes, robots, MDDs (Mediation Device Drivers), etc and how they are developed to interface with data sources such…
Read More »Allstream Transforms Service Layer with NetCracker. NetCracker Technology announced that Allstream, Canada’s all-business communications provider, has agreed to transform its end-to-end order management and service fulfillment capabilities using its comprehensive next-gen innovative NetCracker 9 suite. Allstream is a Canadian leader in IP communications and the only national communications provider that works exclusively with business customers of all sizes with a coast-to-coast national IP fiber network. This…
Read More »NetBoss Technologies Announces Ventraq Acquisition. NetBoss Technologies, Inc. has announced that it has acquired the Ventraq Business Analytics (BIAS) technology assets, product portfolio and associated intellectual property, in addition to assuming the existing customer base, support, and maintenance responsibilities from Ventraq, Inc., an innovative provider of large-scale data integration, network and business analytics, and personalization solutions for communication service providers (CSPs) and large enterprises. The BIAS…
Read More »"I have discovered that there are two types of command interfaces in the world of computing: good interfaces and user interfaces." Daniel J. Bernstein. OSS don't add much value in isolation. They need to get data from somewhere and then add value to that data to turn it into insight. Of course they get some data from manual input, but most of their data come from…
Read More »DeployPartners alliance with OSS Integrators. DeployPartners will be entering into a strategic alliance with USA Service Assurance Solution provider OSS Integrators in the near future. The merge of DeployPartners and OSS Integrators will enable both companies to benefit from each others experience and skills resulting in our customers getting the benefit of a wider set of solutions and product knowledge. ?About DeployPartners: DeployPartners deliver high-quality Service…
Read More »"I've failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed." Michael Jordan. Regular readers of this blog will have recollections of previous discussions about setting up a sandpit environment for customers. A couple of examples are here (building sandcastles) and here (lose your fear in a sandpit). There a few different ways that this can be achieved: Building a dedicated physical trial…
Read More »Comptel Receives a Significant Order from Australian NBN Co for Comptel Fulfillment. Comptel has received a significant order from its Australian customer NBN Co for Comptel Fulfillment. The deal exceeds 1.3 million euros and consists of software licenses and services. This is an extension for the deal made in 2011.
Read More »"Just like any product, an open API needs a business justification, user personas, clear use cases, a roadmap, a revenue model, a pre- and post-launch plan, and specific needs in the areas of marketing, sales, support, documentation, and security. These needs are completely separate from those of your core product, though they should be strategically consistent. In fact, it’s not unusual for companies to assign a…
Read More »"In today’s cloud computing world, many Product Managers will be faced with the decision of whether to open an API to their users. Open APIs have many advantages, but they also bring significant business challenges. In this post, I describe key benefits and challenges of open APIs, and why Product Managers should treat an open API as its own product instead of as a feature." Daniel…
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