Passionate About OSS Blog | Passionate About OSS and BSS

Challengers

"Above all, remember to challenge everything. Challenge assumptions. Challenge the status quo. Challenge the “complacent incumbents.” Challenge the rules. Challenge yourself." Josh Linkner in his book "Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity." In my mind, creativity within an OSS framework comes from being able to make connections that nobody else has made before. The typical OSS collects a staggering amount of information and…

27/09/2013 No Comments

Innovation Processes

"Companies that have “innovation processes” often stifle the creativity of their organization by making those processes too rule-driven, formal and restrictive." Josh Linkner in his book "Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity." As you'll see in the side-bar, innovation is a common theme in my blog posts. There is so much innovation required to develop outstanding OSS suites, so it's a topic of…

26/09/2013 No Comments

Quality vs Quantity

"Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge." Winston Churchill. Dear reader, let me ask you a question.... or maybe more than one. If you engaged a consultant on a $1m assignment and they gave you a report on a single sheet of paper, would you feel aggrieved? Now what if that single sheet held a formula that unlocked the cure for cancer? Would it be worth…

25/09/2013 No Comments

Recruit from the bottom, promote to the top

"One thing at a time, all things in succession. That which grows fast withers as rapidly; and that which grows slow endures." J. G. Holland. When it comes to building an OSS team, having a diverse team of linchpins who have specific knowledge of your OSS is essential. It’s definitely helpful to promote from within your own organisation for a whole number of reasons, including: Team morale…

24/09/2013 No Comments

Egomaniacs and misfits

"I’ve met plenty of egomaniacs who think they have all the answers. Time typically proves them wrong. I’ve never met anyone who’s had more than a few of the answers herself. That’s why we need other leaders to help us. Build a well-rounded team, hopefully one with plenty of misfits, and typically someone in there will have the answer you need to any given problem –…

23/09/2013 No Comments

The A Team

"Plenty of recruiters and those in HR like to talk about engaging in a war for talent, but to be truthful, most of it is about finding good enough people at an acceptable rate of pay. Filling slots. More relevant and urgent, though, is that it's not really a search for talent. It's a search for attitude.... ....An organization filled with honest, motivated, connected, eager, learning,…

22/09/2013 No Comments

Projections

"Anyone who says businessmen deal in facts, not fiction, has never read old five-year projections." Malcolm Forbes. OSS have an important role to play when it comes to creating the trends and projections from aggregated data. Put simply: if the projections underestimate real network growth then congestion will be high, as will customer dissatisfaction. if the projections overestimate real network growth then overcapitalisation will occur by building…

21/09/2013 No Comments

Ericsson and Orange announce BSS cooperation

Ericsson and Orange announce BSS cooperation in Switzerland Ericsson and Orange are expanding their business together in Switzerland. As part of the new agreement Ericsson will supply core components of the new hardware and software architecture supporting Orange Switzerland’s business processes, or business support systems (BSS). In addition, Ericsson will integrate the platforms into the Orange network and operate it over a five-year period under a managed…

21/09/2013 No Comments

The rise of non-traditional OSS

"You will either step forward into growth or you will step back into safety." Abraham Maslow. B/OSS started out servicing only the biggest of telcos, starting with AT&T. Then they migrated to the smaller carriers, then ISPs and the march continues. As electronic business and related digital communications are increasingly built into the business models of new companies, so is the need for OSS to evolve…

20/09/2013 No Comments

Orange global M2M with Ericsson’s Device Connection platform

Orange Business Services reinforces its global M2M capabilities for multinationals with Ericsson’s Device Connection platform Orange Business Services and Ericsson announced that the companies have entered into a strategic agreement to better serve the growing global M2M market and to respond to multi-domestic needs. International companies often need global operations while addressing local requirements of end-users, such as high broadband usage. These needs are mainly driven by…

20/09/2013 No Comments

When B/OSS hinders

"The likes of Facebook and Whatsapp are eroding traditional revenue streams and CSPs therefore need to prioritize, looking at alternative streams instead of relying on traditional revenue streams which offer legacy services like voice and SMS." Timo Ahomäki. OTT players like Whatsapp are definitely a threat to CSP revenue streams and are clearly causing erosion in many markets. The OTT organisations have a few advantages that…

19/09/2013 No Comments

Hub One Chooses NetCracker

Hub One Chooses NetCracker to Streamline OSS for its Network Infrastructure and Accelerate New Service Introduction Hub One, the trademark of Hub télécom and Nomadvance, companies of the Aéroports de Paris group, and NetCracker Technology announced today that Hub One has selected NetCracker’s OSS Solution to help the company to expand, tailor, and accelerate its service offerings; gain greater control over its network topology; and streamline…

19/09/2013 No Comments

7 creativity killers

"Research into the decline of creativity has led to some startling conclusions. In a sample of 1500 children aged 3–5, 98 percent ranked as "geniuses" in divergent thinking; in children aged 8–10 the figure fell to just 32 percent; and by age 13–15 it had declined further to a mere 10 percent. In other words, children become less creative as they grow older. Moreover, in a…

18/09/2013 No Comments

Making elephants dance

"One of our three candidate picks for CEO would be a leader who has made elephants dance and has the gravitas that would make Wall Street swoon." Carl Howe. The comment above is in relation to finding a replacement for Steve Ballmer as CEO of Microsoft. That doesn't have a whole lot of relevance to OSS, but I love the part about making elephants dance, which…

17/09/2013 No Comments

Comptel Converges Mediation for Ziggo

Comptel Streamlines Mediation for Ziggo’s Services Comptel Corporation announced that its convergent mediation software has replaced some of Dutch communications service provider Ziggo’s existing systems. The company’s software platform enables the operator to more easily and rapidly collect, process and transform service transactions into billable records.

17/09/2013 No Comments

The CRM imperative

"Operators need to take a new approach to customer relationship management (CRM), whereby all customer interactions are performed in the context of the customer’s end-to-end experience. To adopt this approach, operators must maximize the use of all the customer-experience data within their network OSS, BSS and CRM domains in order to form a three-dimensional view of the customer. This approach will enable operators to ensure positive…

16/09/2013 No Comments

From little things, big things grow

"Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things, I am tempted to think there are no little things." Bruce Barton. Having built multi-domain OSS from the ground up I know how daunting a green-fields OSS can be. So many things to get done. So many inter-dependencies. So many facts and figures to uncover. So many interfaces to develop. So much data to collect.…

15/09/2013 2 Comments

Automagically

"These are calculated automagically" Darryl Harvey. OSS automations like flow-through provisioning are the holy grail of CSPs as they seek to offer self-service models for their customers. As Darryl mentions above, CSPs often expect OSS vendors to get these automations working automagically. Perhaps you're more familiar with the other mythical term, "out-of-the-box." But behind the scenes these automations are usually a complex combination of processes, data…

14/09/2013 No Comments

Support: After-sales = after-thought

"Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business." Zig Ziglar. So, you've sold a new OSS and then handed over the keys to the customer. Are they ready to take over at the wheel yet? Have you given them enough of an apprenticeship? Okay, let's say that all…

13/09/2013 No Comments

Ericsson deploys world’s largest CDN

Ericsson deploys world's largest operator CDN for Rostelecom Rostelecom, Russia's largest telecoms operator and leader in the country's broadband and pay TV markets, has deployed the world's largest operator content delivery network (CDN) - thanks to a solution developed and integrated by Ericsson