"You get the best effort from others not by lighting a fire beneath them, but by building a fire within." Bob Nelson. Sports present an interesting parallel to the business world due to their single-minded focus on a goal, with members of successful teams tending to share a common focus. It's also interesting that the best in the world tend to seek the assistance of coaches…
Read More »"I do all my work by storyboard, so as I draw the storyboard, the world gets more and more complex, and as a result, my North, South, East, West directions kind of shift and go off base..." Hayao Miyazaki. Does your B/OSS have the ability to track each interaction relating to a customer, through all the different systems in your suite? If yes, can you then…
Read More »"Google has a plan. Eventually it wants to get into your brain. "When you think about something and don't really know much about it, you will automatically get information," Google CEO Larry Page said in Steven Levy's book, "In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes Our Lives." "Eventually you'll have an implant, where if you think about a fact, it will just tell you…
Read More »"(I) likened developing your people at the point of execution to training pilots after you take delivery of your airplanes." Jeff Joerres. Does this sound familiar in the OSS world? How often have you heard of an OSS implementation being signed off before training commences? Or training just before UAT (User Acceptance Testing) starts? I liken OSS training to being an apprenticeship rather than a few…
Read More »"An empowered organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success." Stephen Covey, In yesterday's blog, I described the importance of providing the field workforce with tools that improve the feedback of data into the OSS, thus improving data integrity (hopefully). However, I intentionally left one tool-set out that can…
Read More »"True intuitive expertise is learned from prolonged experience with good feedback on mistakes." Daniel Kahneman. The field workforce is one of the most important components of any CSP but is often forgotten by OSS exponents. Afterall, they are the ones who go to site and physically touch the network every day - they build it, connect it, fix it, modify it and maintain it. But when…
Read More »“All content considerations should first be led from the brand. From there, make decisions about goals, initiatives and objectives. To do otherwise will doom a content strategy to being ineffective at best and off-message and harmful to the brand at worst.” Brian Bibler. I must admit that I'm pretty new to the world of digital signage. I've known of it being a carrier service, but up…
Read More »"The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them." Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Many are wondering what the M2M acronym means for their OSS. M2M, or Machine to Machine, is sometimes touted as one possible saviour for CSPs that are losing revenues from their traditional cash cows like fixed-line voice networks. M2M is not really new, with telemetry…
Read More »GE partners with AT&T, Cisco, Intel for 'Industrial Internet' General Electric Co announced partnerships with AT&T Inc, Cisco Systems Inc and Intel Corp to expand its 'Industrial Internet' service that allows its customers to analyze data and predict outcomes. The service helps customers analyze industrial 'big data'- data so large that it is difficult to process using traditional database and software. This would help customers minimize…
Read More »"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." Thomas A. Edison. I'm not sure that Edison got the numbers quite right, whereby the following ratio is implied: 1% = thinking 99% = doing but his point that "doing far outweighs theorising" has its merits in OSS implementations. One example is sand-pit environments. In an earlier post about Rapid Prototyping, the concept of having a highly…
Read More »“They (customers) don’t want quarter-inch bits. They want quarter-inch holes.” Leo McGinneva. As alluded to in McGinneva's quote above, OSS are only a means to an end. A customer doesn't want a Performance Management tool. They want to ensure their network is performing efficiently and reliably. If a better approach comes along, there might no longer be a need for the traditional Performance Manager tool. Your…
Read More »"Mobile data, mobile media, mobile sales, mobile marketing, mobile commerce, mobile finance, mobile payments, mobile health, and many more explode." Daniel Burrus. Mobile, mobile, mobile. Mobile devices are still getting smarter and faster, allowing ever more sophisticated apps to run on them, including ones servicing the sectors listed above. But these apps rely on data, sometimes public data, sometimes private data. Will app developers, and in…
Read More »"They say "the house always wins." And it's true – games always favour their maker. If you're not playing a part in designing the game you're playing, you're probably being played.." Dr Jason Fox. Following a recent blog entitled Gamified Learning, a friend and colleague pointed me towards the work of Dr Jason Fox, someone with far more expertise on the subject matter than me. Thanks…
Read More »"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest." Benjamin Franklin. In an earlier post, the question of using gamification as a means of learning was posed In another earlier post, knowledge bases were discussed. And in a third post, the concept of an OSS apprenticeship was proposed. In today's post, let's discuss a product concept that merges the three together. In any new OSS implementation, your…
Read More »"Let us not bankrupt our todays by paying interest on the regrets of yesterday and by borrowing in advance the troubles of tomorrow." Ralph W. Sockman. In yesterday's blog, we spoke of the need to understand how money flows in a CSP and build the systems / processes to improve upon defined metrics. Today, I recount a story of a high-flying, voice-only CSP that went bankrupt,…
Read More »"In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later." Harold S. Geneen. In the world of Telco, there are also two coins. One is technology and one is cash. Telco and OSS engineers often get wrapped up in the righteousness of technology. Having a B.Eng. and B.Sc. means that I'm tempted to stray…
Read More »"Innovation accelerates and compounds. Each point in front of you is bigger than anything that ever happened." Marc Andreessen. Regular readers / subscribers of this blog have noticed that SDN / NFV (Software Defined Networking and Network Function Virtualisation) has been a regular topic of conversation because it has the potential to revolutionise not just OSS and carrier networks but vendor and CSP business models as…
Read More »"Heights by great men reached and kept were not obtained by sudden flight but, while their companions slept, they were toiling upward in the night." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 110 years ago today, the Wright Brothers made the first manned flight, a well known story. Not quite so well known is the story of Samuel Langley, a highly educated, distinguished individual who was seen as the man…
Read More »"We don't know where our first impressions come from or precisely what they mean, so we don't always appreciate their fragility." Malcolm Gladwell. They say that first impressions are lasting. Apple knows this and invests greatly in their first impressions, their packaging. I'm no great devotee of Apple, but I was certainly wowed by the packaging of one of their products as I unwrapped it recently.…
Read More »"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.." John Donne. Just as no man is an island, no CSP is an island since they all rely on connections with other providers (and customers for that matter). Carriers will rely on network links or asset sharing with other CSPs to deliver services for customers. Since those off-net links are…
Read More »"A communications network forms the backbone of any successful organization. These networks transport a multitude of applications and data, including high-quality video and delay-sensitive data such as real-time voice. The bandwidth-intensive applications stretch network capabilities and resources, but also complement, add value, and enhance every business process. Networks must provide secure, predictable, measurable, and sometimes guaranteed services. Achieving the required Quality of Service (QoS) by managing…
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