"If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher." Abraham Lincoln. Flow-through provisioning is a wonderful thing. It usually takes a lot of effort to design the data model so that all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle line up for each and every new service provisioned by your awesome product. But the oft forgotten Cinderella at this dance is actually the…
Read More »"As consumers we are incredibly discerning. We sense where has been great care in the design, and when there is cynicism and greed." Jonathan Ive. Over the years, I've created interface specifications for many devices, element managers and network managers (NE/EMS/NMS). Some have been very easy to figure out. Others have been highly complex. Today, I'm going to visit this from a slightly different angle. I'm…
Read More »"Gold was discovered in California in of 1848. By May of 1848 reports were stating there is more gold in them there hills that all the people in California could take out in fifty years.” A man called Samuel Brannan opened his small store at John Sutter’s Fort, right in the heart of the gold rush. Brannan took a little gold and traveled back to San…
Read More »"Sometimes you are in sync with the times, sometimes you are in advance, sometimes you are late." Bernardo Bertolucci. Yesterday we spoke of the OSS of the future not having an offline database that needs to be synchronised against network assets regularly. As we all know, data synch is one of the banes of an OSS operators existence. Another area of generic weakness within the OSS…
Read More »CSG International to Acquire Key Volubill Assets CSG International, Inc., a global provider of interactive transaction-driven solutions and services, announced that it has purchased key assets of Volubill, a leading supplier of integrated real-time policy and charging solutions to mobile, satellite, and fixed broadband operators. Volubill products, which are used by service providers globally to bring to market and monetize the new generation of digital, communication-based…
Read More »NetCracker Transforms BSS and Enhances Content Delivery for Israel’s yes Satellite TV NetCracker Technology announced that Israeli direct broadcast satellite provider yes has implemented its Billing, Rating, and CRM solutions to improve customer interactions, accelerate speed-to-market for complex service bundles and promotions, and support new forms of content delivery and transactions across a variety of customer devices. yes is the sole direct broadcast satellite TV provider…
Read More »"The agendas on the management side of the table now are not in sync like they used to be because you have vastly different entities supplying programming to networks." Dick Wolf It's funny how that quote sounds so relevant to network management platforms on software-defined networks yet has nothing to do with it. But I digress. In an earlier post about virtualisation meeting big data, I…
Read More »"Passivity is fatal to us." Mao Zedong. In a blog written a year ago today, we discussed some of the challenges in maintaining data synchronisation from your outside plant, your passive network, your pits, pipes and cables, because they have no programmatic interface. Without the mechanism for automated feedback via a programmatic interface, the CSP has to build strong, reliable processes to ensure the feedback loop…
Read More »"Money is not the most important thing in the world. Love is. Fortunately, I love money." Jackie Mason. Whether you're with an integrator or are a CSP's employee, there's one* basic question to ask yourself when starting on a new OSS: Is your OSS assisting the CSP with their top line (revenues) or bottom line (profit, but extensibly cutting costs)? In my experience, most people who…
Read More »"The more restrictions you have, the easier anything is to write." Stephen Sondheim. In an earlier post, we discussed the importance placed on permissions in an OSS. We talked of the slice and dice analogy of being able to segregate data by function and operational group and how difficult this can be for many OSS, especially ones with complex referential integrity constructs. But I sometimes wonder…
Read More »"When a match has equal partners then I fear not." Aeschylus. The major OSS of the nineties and noughties can be categorised as centralised, structured (ie built on relational databases and modelling connection-oriented services) and not-quite-realtime. I envisage the next generation will be distributed, unstructured (ie virtualised and with rapid shifts in data sources) and very real-time. Almost the antithesis of the old. Virtualisation (ie SDN…
Read More »"We are not cisterns made for hoarding, we are channels made for sharing." Billy Graham. Have you ever stopped to wonder why most CSP's OSS are so complex? Put simply, they are almost all hoarders. They collect services, device types, management systems, data, interfaces, etc. But how often do they ever discard one? Even when their house is full of stuff, they just build a shed…
Read More »"It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences." Audre Lorde. An OSS touches so many parts of a CSP's business that it seems completely obvious (to me at least) that an implementation team needs to blend vastly different skills, personalities, traits, cultures and ambitions into a common set of objectives. But there are times when…
Read More »"Suffering is the pathway to awareness." Zen. Why is it that almost every OSS project involves pain, suffering and long hours? The OctopOSS certainly finds a way of whacking you in a different way each time. But each one leads you down the pathway of increased awareness - making you more aware of the potential pitfalls next time around and hence, more valuable. Not too long…
Read More »"Much of what is called investment is actually nothing more than mergers and acquisitions, and of course mergers and acquisitions are generally accompanied by downsizing." Susan George. In recent times, OSS has come under increased attention from the incumbent equipment manufacturers for a variety of reasons, not least being their shifting focus towards services rather than products and virtualisation making networks more software definable. Following this trend,…
Read More »"Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer are called hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse at are called software." Anonymous. Virtualisation of the network (read SDN, NFV, etc) is a game changer for OSS. To follow the anonymous quote above, most current OSS are great at managing anything that can be hit with a hammer. Let's take inventory…
Read More »"Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement." Peter Drucker. Permissions are an important part of an OSS, particularly in a carrier with many different operational groups. They are the mechanism that only allows a user to access the parts of the OSS, or its data sets, that are necessary for their particular role. From analysing many different products over the years, it…
Read More »AsiaInfo bags Telenor BSS Transformation Project AsiaInfo-Linkage, Inc., Asia’s leading supplier of BSS systems, today announced that it had secured its first major business support system (BSS) contract with a top tier European operator group. The contract is with Telenor ASA (Telenor Group), which has operations in seven European countries. The win represents AsiaInfo’s first project with a top-tier European operator group after the company formally…
Read More »"Inditex (the owner of the Zara fashion brand) has weathered the global economic downturn better than rivals like H&M as its “fast fashion” model has allowed it to be more responsive to changing consumer demand, while its focus on the latest trends has made it less vulnerable to the rise of discounters like Primark." Thomson Reuter. Zara's fast fashion business model has been a huge success…
Read More »"Technology is like fish. The longer it stays on the shelf, the less desirable it becomes." Andrew Heller. Almost every element of your OSS depreciates - your hardware (of course), your software, effort, customisations, etc. The only element of your OSS that potentially doesn't depreciate is your data. As data ages, its relevance diminishes so it could be seen to be depreciating. The same is especially true…
Read More »"One can envisage that future banks will run themselves general ledgers, treasury systems, product catalogues - other IT systems will be outsourced to specialized digital services providers. Most of interactions with customers, including CRM, electronic payments, sales channel support, and client reporting will form a part of external digital environment: Banks will deliver their products to reselling and cooperating organizations with white labels." Janusz Filipiak on the…
Read More »