Logo_white_on_blue-min

Blogs

Filter by Date Period

Select Date
Filter by Date Range
Filter by Date Range

Filter by Category

Filter by Category

Big Data – Big Trust (part 2)

"To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved." George MacDonald. In yesterday's blog, we spoke of the shades of grey that different users feel on the spectrum of free services versus secure/private services. We also spoke of the potential strategic advantage held by many traditional CSPs compared with their relatively newer Internet (OTT) equivalents - the advantage of a having a trusting customer base.…

Read More »
14/04/2014 No Comments

Big data – Big trust

"If you're not paying for it (an app or service), you're not the customer; you're the product." Adage. Declines in revenues from traditional services have CSPs scrambling to identify new revenue streams, often through very lateral approaches. The massive databases held by CSPs are one of their biggest assets even if they don't appear on balance sheets directly. Some organisations are better than others at leveraging value…

Read More »
13/04/2014 No Comments

SevOne acquires RapidEngines

SevOne Acquires Log Analytics Provider RapidEngines. SevOne, the leader of scalable performance monitoring solutions to the world’s most connected companies, today announced it has acquired RapidEngines, a leading provider of highly scalable log analytics software for IT enterprises, service providers and application developers. The acquisition is the first from SevOne since closing the $150M investment from Bain Capital which remains one of the largest venture financings…

Read More »
12/04/2014 No Comments

OSS Book Cover – Survey Results

A huge thanks to everyone who has voted on their preferred covers for my upcoming OSS implementation book. The results were surprisingly even. I thought there would be a clear stand-out, but it's been pretty close so far. The results are as follows: For cross-referencing, here are the four options again:

Read More »
12/04/2014 1 Comment

Migrating from NMS-level management

"I don't like to be out of my comfort zone, which is about a half an inch wide." Larry David. There are still many organisations, even CSPs, that manage their customers and networks from their network equipment vendors. Blend in some spreadsheets and cross-domain tools like SolarWinds in combination with CRM, financial planning, etc and they've managed to build a workable solution on a relatively small…

Read More »
11/04/2014 No Comments

MEO (Portugal Telecom) signs Gemalto cloud-based billing

MEO rolls out operator billing using Gemalto's Netsize cloud-based billing services. Gemalto is providing its hosted and fully managed Netsize billing services platform to MEO. MEO is part of Portugal Telecom, Portugal’s leading mobile operator with more than seven million subscribers. The cloud-based solution eliminates the need for MEO to create, manage and maintain its own online billing infrastructure for third party services and supports seamless…

Read More »
10/04/2014 No Comments

Aircel deploys Elitecore’s policy manager

Aircel deploys Elitecore's NetVertex PCRF. Indian telecom service provider Aircel has deployed NetVertex PCRF for policy control with Elitecore Technologies. Aircel has mobile presence across 23 circles in India. NetVertex PCRF was introduced in Aircel network for its flexible & carrier grade architecture based on 3GPP standards to enable greater revenue creation and enhance scalability, eliminating network outage with geo redundancy and reduced turnaround time for…

Read More »
10/04/2014 No Comments

Upcoming OSS Book – Cover Samples Survey

Thanks for all the great feedback on my upcoming OSS book. It caused a 5x spike in traffic on the website, which is exciting. I’m now in the process of getting the artwork done and am running a quick survey to  see whether you like any of the drafts so far.

Read More »
10/04/2014 1 Comment

Good-cheap-fast OSS

"Win-win is a belief in the Third Alternative. It's not your way or my way : it's a better way." Stephen Covey. The following image has been circulating the Internet and it got me thinking about its implications to OSS. There are many who would believe that there are three kinds of OSS and you can pick any two. In many cases this could be right…

Read More »
10/04/2014 No Comments

Automating the OSS decision-making process

"In a typical telecom environment, data to support systematic decision making can feel like “feast or famine”. On the one hand, the amount of information available, when combined with the expertise of strategic planners with different backgrounds and experience, can be overwhelming. On the other hand, when launching new products into new markets, where the past is an unreliable guide to the future, data that provides guidance…

Read More »
09/04/2014 No Comments

Predicting personality from mobile CDRs

"We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die." Albert Camus. This paper entitled "Predicting people personality using novel mobile phone-based metrics" by de Montjoye, et al provides evidence that user personality can be predicted with reliability* from CDR (Call Data Record) data that's available to all mobile operators and all types of phones without needing any custom…

Read More »
08/04/2014 6 Comments

Long lost leased services

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." Henry David Thoreau. Stranded assets were mentioned in an earlier post, but one asset class that was overlooked in that post was services leased from other communications providers. It's not uncommon for enterprise customers to ask third-party analysts to conduct…

Read More »
07/04/2014 No Comments

Prioritisation of challenges

"The bottom line is, when people are crystal clear about the most important priorities of the organization and team they work with and prioritized their work around those top priorities, not only are they many times more productive, they discover they have the time they need to have a whole life." Stephen Covey. I read a TMF (Telecommunication Management Forum) publication that showed four concentric circles…

Read More »
06/04/2014 No Comments

Mobile Management

"Global mobile data traffic grew 81 percent in 2013. Global mobile data traffic reached 1.5 exabytes per month at the end of 2013, up from 820 petabytes per month at the end of 2012. Last year’s mobile data traffic was nearly 18 times the size of the entire global Internet in 2000. One exabyte of traffic traversed the global Internet in 2000, and in 2013 mobile…

Read More »
05/04/2014 No Comments

The sexiest job of the 21st Century

"In our 2012 study of data analysts, we characterized the process of data science as five high-level tasks: discovery, wrangling, profiling, modeling, and reporting. Most analytic and visualization tools focus on the last two phases of this workflow. Unfortunately, most of a data scientist’s time is spent on the first three stages." Sean Kandel on HBR's blog in response to another HBR Blog about Data Scientists…

Read More »
04/04/2014 No Comments

Project Platypus

"One of the most unusual animals in the natural world, the platypus looks like a beaver, but with the bill and webbed feet of a duck. It has the venom of a reptile and lays eggs like a bird. [Ivy] Ross decided to build a product-development team modeled after the platypus, with people from many different backgrounds and functions. She brought together in her Magic Theatre…

Read More »
03/04/2014 No Comments

Extracting information from your OSS

"Things get done only if the data we gather can inform and inspire those in a position to make [a] difference." Mike Schmoker. I'm possibly having a major brain-fade here (again), but the only two ways I can think of for extracting information from your OSS are: Via your OSS GUI (Graphical User Interface) Via some form of reports Note that I exclude system interfaces from…

Read More »
02/04/2014 No Comments

RCN Selects NetCracker

RCN Selects NetCracker’s Converged Revenue Management Solution to Launch Advanced Products and Enrich Customer Experience. NetCracker Technology announced that RCN, a US-based provider of high speed Internet, digital TV, and telephone services, has signed a long-term contract extension for NetCracker’s Business Support Systems (BSS) solutions and added NetCracker’s next-generation converged rating and billing solution to improve customer experience, reduce operational costs, and bring advanced new services…

Read More »
01/04/2014 No Comments

OSS – A five forces strategic analysis

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results." Winston Churchill. Michael Porter's famous Five Forces Model, shown below, is the basis for our review of the OSS industry today. The five forces are: Threat of new entrants: There are a large number of incumbent providers of OSS solutions and the market is fragmented Some of the world's biggest ICT tech provider companies provide…

Read More »
01/04/2014 No Comments

My new OSS book is nearly ready for publishing

"Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light." Vera Nazarian. After lots of writing and refining, my book, which is dedicated to OSS implementations, is almost finished. It's based around 22 commonly asked questions, particularly by readers who are relatively new to OSS. It also allows readers with a particular question in mind to go straight to the…

Read More »
31/03/2014 No Comments

What are the barriers to yes?

"Consumers are statistics. Customers are people." H. Stanley Marcus. The key OSS buying decision for customers is, “Do I have enough information to make a useful decision. If not, what would I need to know to know or what would I need to see to make a decision?” Understand what the barriers to saying yes are. An OSS is an expensive tool that will have long-lasting…

Read More »
30/03/2014 No Comments