Passionate About OSS Blog | Passionate About OSS and BSS

What does the future hold for telco? Can it inform long-term OSS/BSS supplier strategies?

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…

20/03/2023 No Comments

What’s your Everest?

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…

16/03/2023 No Comments

Sometimes an OSS budget is too big

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…

07/03/2023 No Comments

The Pain. The Burning Ring of Fire. How to get OSS Projects unstuck and approved

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.…

20/02/2023 No Comments

What can OSS learn from Google and ChatGPT?

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…

14/02/2023 No Comments

How to revolutionise telco Customer Satisfaction via an OSS-led Mindset Shift

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…

08/02/2023 No Comments

There are 2600+ things on our mind. What’s on your mind?

Through Passionate About OSS, we've created well over 2,600 articles that share ideas, tips, techniques and stories about the OSS industry (ie sharing what's on our mind). However, recent articles about a shortage of end-user empathy in OSS / BSS / telco have highlighted that we also don't ask enough questions about what's on your mind and other readers like you. This is particularly true of…

01/02/2023 No Comments

Uncovering Hidden Gems: How an Unexpected Technique Unlocked Surprising Insights

It's funny how you sometimes unlock powerful work techniques without intending to isn't it? So powerful that they become an important part of the way you work on future OSS/BSS projects. Or perhaps just an incisive tool that you pull out of your kit-bag in certain situations. A few years ago I was helping a client to develop a 5-year plan and associated product roadmap. We…

31/01/2023 No Comments

Telcos have 3 enduring assets. They might not be what you think. They’re almost definitely undervalued

Have you pondered what the greatest assets are for telcos with their current business models? We recently looked at their Fundamental telco differentiators but what about assets / strengths? Some may cite factors such as network infrastructure, spectrum, intellectual property (IP) or employees (and I'll always include OSS/BSS in this list naturally). These might all be assets, but I don't necessarily equate these to enduring advantages…

27/01/2023 No Comments

What changes would you implement to make the OSS/BSS industry more valuable?

How valuable is the OSS / BSS industry do you think? How would you measure it? How would the market measure it? Have you ever pondered these questions? By extension, have you also wondered how to make it more valuable? Or perhaps how to make certain players within it more valuable? If you have, would you apply a technical lens to making OSS companies more valuable?…

20/01/2023 No Comments

Is innovationism, not capitalism, driving the decline in telco?

It's a completely silly question to ask you whether you've noticed that the world of OSS is changing rapidly isn't it? Of course you've already noticed that it has and is. Do you already have plans to learn new concepts to help you adapt to those changes in 2023? If so, are you thinking about learning more about technology? Maybe a new programming language? Maybe a…

14/01/2023 No Comments

Does your Telco/OSS/BSS world feel like a Zero Sum Mental Model? There may be another way!

Do you ever get that feeling that your mental models of the telco / tech / OSS/BSS worlds are different to those of almost everyone else? Do you feel like there are the status-quo approaches that are kind of proven, but still not really as good as they could be? That there must be even better approaches? I feel deeply embedded in this industry, but due…

09/01/2023 No Comments

Fundamental telco differentiators… flipped on their heads

When you think about fundamental differentiators for telcos, what factors come to your mind? Perhaps it is one of the following (with a typical description of that differentiation factor provided): Coverage: Operators with extensive coverage (ie fixed-line footprint and/or mobile coverage) may have an advantage over those with limited coverage areas Network quality: Operators with faster, more reliable networks may be more attractive to customers Customer…

05/01/2023 No Comments

OSS User Interfaces or User Interactions? GUIs or MUIs?

The cool part of this time of year, the holiday period, is that it prompts you to look backwards and look forwards. To be honest, writing articles here on the blog prompts me to do that throughout the year too, but there does tend to be a bit more downtime for reflection around the boundary of one year closing and another just starting afresh. ChatGPT's latest…

02/01/2023 No Comments

The tree analogy – a tale of two eras of telco business models

With the holidays almost upon us in many parts of the world, I thought I'd share an analogy. Like many analogies, it's a bit oversimplified. It's also possibly a bit inflammatory in some circles. Hopefully though, it gives a different frame of reference for how the telco business model has changed over the years. More importantly, it gives a different point of reference for how telcos…

21/12/2022 No Comments

A seismic shift is happening

A seismic shift is happening that will change the world of OSS/BSS so fundamentally in the next few years that it totally blows my mind. It will be the biggest in my 20+ year career in the telco industry. The following pic is from an IA Summit Keynote by Charles Lamanna, the Corporate VP of Business Apps & Platforms at Microsoft. He leads the development of…

14/12/2022 No Comments

How virtualisation has changed the rules for network inventory

Back in the days when I first started working on OSS/BSS projects (the year 2000), I fell in love first with network inventory solutions. I loved being able to pick through all the data coming from various different inventory data sources (mostly element management systems, direct from devices and east-west systems such as service order management and address / number management tools) Those were the days…

12/12/2022 No Comments

The anecdote where OSS, our new website, my new book and the cannabis industry overlaps

I can see it now. This post is going to get quite a bit off-topic before looping back around to there being an OSS moral-of-the-story. Before that, we’ll touch on a few slightly more tangential topics. Strap yourself in. The ride’s going to get a bit bumpy. As you saw in an earlier post, my next book, “Digital Transformation: Simplified” is in the final stages of…

09/12/2022 No Comments

Automation at the 5G Network Edge

Thought I’d share some information about a 5G Edge Automation project I’ve been assisting with in recent months – in collaboration with luminaries such as EnterpriseWeb (project lead), KX, Intel, Keysight, Tech Mahindra, Red Hat and Fortinet. KX has just shared a blog article, which includes the following quote that helps to summarise why I’m really excited to be helping the team (in a small way). With…

07/12/2022 No Comments

Have you figured out what questions to ask your big OSS/BSS data?

TM Forum holds an absolute treasure-trove of information about the OSS industry, contributed by many leading thinkers. With over 2,500 articles, some are widely known / discussed and others are hidden gems, it holds an amazing repository of knowledge about our industry. Today I landed on an article called, “GB979A Big Data Analytics Use Cases.” For someone as fascinated by OSS/BSS data as me, it certainly piqued…

01/12/2022 No Comments

There’s no competition for OSS cookbooks making food out of soccer balls

Seth Godin recently wrote a brilliant article that describes the craziness of seeking a market with no competition. In entirety, his article goes like this: “There’s no competition for cookbooks on making food out of soccer balls and hockey pucks. There’s no competition for software that charges you to find out the temperature on Mars. There’s no competition for a service that counts how many pairs of shoes…

23/11/2022 No Comments

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