Passionate About OSS Blog | Passionate About OSS and BSS

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

30/03/2014 No Comments

What has worked?

"The Japanese have a wonderful sense of design and a refinement in their art. They try to produce beautiful paintings with the minimum number of strokes." David Rockefeller. Have you ever sat back and wondered what has worked on your OSS projects or operations? Have you been able to figure out why it has worked? Evolution is the process of refining what has worked. In the…

29/03/2014 No Comments

OSS Test Phases

“Testers! Break that software (as you must) and drive it to the ultimate -- but don't enjoy the programmer's pain.” Boris Beizer. Are you new to the world of OSS and BSS testing and aren't quite sure what testing is required? The following is a set of commonly conducted tests. Some may be relevant to your OSS, others may not: Factory Acceptance Testing (FAT) – This…

28/03/2014 No Comments

OSS compatibility rules

"What is life without incompatible realities?" Ursula K. Le Guin. One of the nifty features of many inventory management solutions is their compatibility rules. They're effectively the equivalent of ensuring a designer doesn't put a square peg in a round hole. A sample use-case is when trying to build a 1 Gigabit (1Gb) Ethernet circuit, you can't plug either end of the cable into Fast Ethernet…

27/03/2014 No Comments

Innovation at the speed of software

"Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it." Steve Jobs. I love this concept - "Innovation at the speed of software." It's one of the premises…

26/03/2014 2 Comments

New training measures needed

"We coach to generate results. And if what we're doing doesn't have a significant, positive, measurable impact on results then basically what we're doing is wasting everybody's time and money." Alan Fine, in his book, "You Already Know How to Be Great." In an earlier post, "The Puppy Analogy," we spoke of the example where a customer is unable to unleash the full potential from their…

25/03/2014 No Comments

Lightower chooses NetCracker

Lightower Fiber Networks Chooses NetCracker to Help Meet Aggressive Growth Goals and Customer Demand. NetCracker Technology announced that Lightower Fiber Networks will upgrade to NetCracker 9.0 in order to improve its network resource visualization and accelerate network planning for its high-performance networking solutions. Lightower Fiber is among the largest pure fiber network providers in the United States. The service provider utilizes NetCracker’s resource inventory solution to…

24/03/2014 No Comments

SDN and NFV’s functional alliance – the OSS game changer?

"ONF is excited about this collaboration with ETSI as we believe this relationship can significantly contribute to the goals of the NFV ISG, which we have pledged to support since it was formed, as well as become a relevant source of requirements and use cases for the SDN community." Dan Pitt. As described in an earlier news report, the team at ONF has formed a strategic…

24/03/2014 No Comments

Who buys an OSS and why? The buyer’s hat analogy

"There are people who are really good managers, people who can manage a big organization, and then there are people who are very analytic or focused on strategy. Those two types don't usually tend to be in the same person. I would put myself much more in the latter camp." Mark Zuckerberg. Who buys an OSS and why? The manager or the strategist? The one with…

23/03/2014 No Comments

A sensitive subject

"Happiness lies neither in vice nor in virtue; but in the manner we appreciate the one and the other, and the choice we make pursuant to our individual organization." Marquis de Sade. The gathering of requirements can be a very sensitive phase of an OSS, particularly in large organisations. The decision of who gets the right to provide input, who gets priority in conflicting situations, who…

22/03/2014 No Comments

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