"So, what have these uber-successful, self-disciplined people figured out that we haven’t? I’ve worked with these people one-on-one, and I can assure you they don’t enjoy self-discipline any more than the rest of us. It’s not that they find it easier to do things that most people don’t like doing; it’s that they think differently about it. Self-discipline is not about chores, or punishment, or doing things…
Read More »"Therefore, let us not despair, but instead, survey the position, consider carefully the action we must take, and then address ourselves to our common task in a mood of sober resolution and quiet confidence, without haste and without pause." Arthur Henderson. In a recent survey of OSS operators, respondents were asked two simple questions: What does your OSS really need to do? Why is it important?…
Read More »"The problems you've got left... are probably the difficult ones. We'd all like to find discount answers to our problems. Organizations, governments and individuals prefer to find the solution that's guaranteed to work, takes little time and even less effort. Of course, the problems that lend themselves to bargain solutions have already been solved. What we're left with are the problems that will take ridiculous amounts…
Read More »"Network Virtualisation must.... De-couple Reproduce Automate" Matt Berry in a presentation discussing VMware NSX. The link above takes you on a great presentation of network virtualisation in general, but VMware's specific instantiation, NSX. The flexibility of these types of network changes will similarly impact the flexibility that your OSS will need to achieve. Can your OSS handle this already? At 29:50 into the presentation, it describes…
Read More »Ericsson and Ciena announce strategic global agreement Ericsson and Ciena announce a strategic global agreement to develop joint transport solutions for IP-optical convergence and service provider software-defined networking (SDN). As part of this agreement, Ericsson offers Ciena's Converged Packet Optical portfolio, including the 6500 Packet-Optical Platform and 5400 family. Ericsson will benefit from Ciena's best-in-class optical technology leadership, including its WaveLogic coherent optical processors and global…
Read More »"I believe greatness is an evolutionary process that changes and evolves era to era." Michael Jordan. Well, it's been a long time coming, but I've finally updated the OSS process map page to show more detail about eTOM and addendum GB921-E, which refers to customer-centric, end-to-end process flows.
Read More »“Thank your customer for complaining and mean it. Most will never bother to complain. They'll just walk away.” Marilyn Suttle. The customer is the single most important component of a CSP and customer support will be the next competitive battleground (if it wasn't already). But are there any B/OSS that give a CSP's call centre operators a singular customer-by-customer view across all aspects of their experience…
Read More »Huawei and Nokia Solutions and Networks Sign Bi-lateral Agreement for Operations Support System Interoperability Initiative Huawei announced the signing of cross-license agreement for an Operations Support System Interoperability Initiative (OSSii) along with Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN). The OSSii aims to simplify interoperability between OSS systems in a multi-vendor environment. OSSii will provide easy access to interfaces that earlier were subject to restricted use, and will…
Read More »"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." Albert Einstein (possibly). The B/OSS suite means a lot of things to a lot of people in a CSP’s organisation. If you are an executive at a CSP or were to put yourself at the terminal of the C-suite for a day, what are the metrics that are going to be…
Read More »Tango Telecom awarded major Policy Control expansion deal by Robi Axiata Tango Telecom, announces a major upgrade and expansion win with Robi Axiata Limited to increase capacity and to provide new and innovative Policy Control use cases such as Dynamic Pricing for Data Services to the operator’s rapidly growing subscriber base. The announcement was made during the Enterprise Ireland trade mission to Singapore and Malaysia led…
Read More »"First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination." Napoleon Hill. Whilst doing some recent research I came across this interesting study by Frost and Sullivan. See slide 5 of this slide-pack. . Without knowing further details about the sample-set used to prepare this percentage, it…
Read More »"A task model is a description of the activities users perform in order to reach their goals. Task models can represent both real-world and digital activities. They help you understand how your product can fit into the users' lives. User journeys are a method of expressing the ideal route for your product to facilitate these activities." Jesmond Allen and James Chudley in their book, "Smashing UX…
Read More »“The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them." George Bernard Shaw. Here's my list of reasons why to choose a career in OSS: If you have ambitions to reach a senior position in a CSP then OSS/BSS gives that grounding. It touches almost every part…
Read More »"Consultancy is a supply - demand equation. The reason I have so much great advice to give is because I produce so much but nobody ever wants to take it." :D I am an OSS consultant but I have to face facts - the customers will always know their business better than me. The customer knows the current situation, their desired future situation and understands better…
Read More »"The easiest software incumbent to disrupt is the one prioritizing the needs of its strategy over the needs of its customer" Aaron Levie. OSS is a risky business because: There are relatively few customers (although this is expanding through deregulation and an increasing pool of enterprise customers) Each of those customers have unique requirements because their networks, processes, services, customers and business models are all different,…
Read More »"In the context of databases, cardinality refers to the uniqueness of data values contained in a column. High cardinality means that the column contains a large percentage of totally unique values. Low cardinality means that the column contains a lot of “repeats” in its data range." Techopedia. Whilst researching today, I came across a word that I'd never heard before - Cardinality. As indicated above, in…
Read More »"The bull or optimist has no eyes for past or present, but only for the future, where streams of revenue play in his imagination." James Buchan. As the old saying goes, "cash is king." Or in CSP parlance, revenue is king. Does this mean that the CSP's OSS must help generate revenue? Well, it certainly doesn't hurt and in fact this should be the target for…
Read More »Small Gold Coast outfit Opmantek beats software giants for major telco deal Gold Coast-based IT company Opmantek Software has landed another seven-figure deal with a major Latin American telco, beating out the world's biggest software giants to secure the business. The contract with a telco in Ecuador will see Opmantek's software used by an estimated 40 per cent of Latin America's population, excluding Brazil - about…
Read More »"IBM’s big January sale looks set to continue with the firm’s software-defined networking [SDN] business rumoured to be on the market for some $1 billion." ITProPortal. This is a fascinating story if true. Given that I'm sure that network virtualisation, be it SDN or other, will become widespread in future years, it makes me ponder IBM's strategic thinking. If you consider that IBM has limited presence in…
Read More »"Watch the product life cycle but more important watch the market life cycle." Phillip Kotler. In yesterday's blog "What must I do today?" and an earlier post entitled "The television analogy" I spoke of the parallels between the television and the telecommunications industry. I have a few diagrams / tables to elaborate today. The standard product life-cycle graph is defined to look something like the following:…
Read More »