“The operative assumption today is that someone, somewhere, has a better idea; and the operative compulsion is to find out who has that better idea, learn it, and put it into action – fast.” Jack Welch (again). The message in today's blog is that OSS has so much scope to learn better ideas from other people, other industries, other processes, etc. The "not invented here" syndrome…
Read More »"When you become a leader success is all about growing others." Jack Welch. Another Welch quote today... perhaps this is Jack Welch week here on Passionate About OSS. Loud and clear, being a successful leader in OSS comes through learning, teaching and ultimately growing others. The OctopOSS has too many tentacles for a lone genius person to do it all. Looking back, virtually everyone I've encountered…
Read More »Two quotes, one orator, one message today. 1. "Managers muddle – leaders inspire. Leaders inspire with clear vision of how things can be done better." 2. To empower your people is “to turn them loose, and get the management layers off their backs, the bureaucratic shackles off their feet and the functional barriers out of their way.” Jack Welch. Just like yesterday, today's blog is led…
Read More »"You can't grow long-term if you can't eat short-term. Anybody can manage short. Anybody can manage long. Balancing those two things is what management is." Jack Welch. When it comes to developing an OSS product, the balance of these two mindsets is always a challenge. Does a particular customer requirement today make sense for the long-term product evolution of tomorrow? Managing short is easy but the…
Read More »Ericsson acquires Telcocell Ericsson welcomes approximately 200 skilled consulting and systems integration professionals who will be integrated into Ericsson in North America over the coming months and will work under the Ericsson brand as of September 3, 2013
Read More »"The principles of modularity, simplicity, or orthogonality, insofar as they contribute to overall simplicity, are an excellent means to an end; but as a substitute for simplicity they are very questionable" C.A.R. Hoare. There are now hundreds of vendors offering COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) OSS tools, many of which are listed on our vendors/products page. There are many niche products in this list. It also…
Read More »"Gamification enables you to drive, measure, and reward high-value behaviors by customers or employees. Game mechanics leverage design and behavioral psychology principles inherent in today’s social games to drive and reward specific user behaviors in business environments. Smart gamification elements—such as points, achievements, levels, leaderboards, missions, and contests—can be employed to drive desired behaviors on virtually any website or enterprise application" Kris Duggan and Kate Shoup…
Read More »Amdocs buys Actix for $120M. With the acquisition of Actix, the leading independent software provider of mobile network optimization solutions, Amdocs will be expanding its CES (Customer Experience Systems) portfolio with geo-located network data that will drive a variety of optimization use cases.
Read More »"Get this over with" vs. ... "Get something started." Seth Godin. Another enlightening blog entry from Seth Godin above. Once again the blog has got nothing to do with OSS, but in my (our?) world it has everything to do with the implementation of an OSS. He uses the analogy of a fast food store getting a transaction over as fast and as cheap as possible.…
Read More »"The marriage of high-speed IP-based network infrastructure and the new generation of IT support systems will ultimately lead to a greater focus on areas such as customer experience, business intelligence and innovative ways of dealing with network congestion." Peter Dykes. Peter has hit the nail on the head in his quote above, from a post on telecoms.com. We're in a period of major change in the…
Read More »"People are very reluctant to talk about their private lives but then you go to the internet and they're much more open." Paulo Coelho. In this article, the insight from Cisco's Chief Futurist, David Evans provides a view of the future of personal health monitoring. In the future of IoE, the device count will be massive and the variety will also be staggering. How will that…
Read More »"An online consumer survey of more than 2,000 smartphone users in the UK and Germany, carried out by billing firm Mach and research agency Opinium in April, found significant demand for direct operator billing, suggesting it could be the preferred payment method of choice for apps and in-app purchases." James Middleton. Carrier billing is an interesting alternative to the OTT threat by filling one of the…
Read More »"Simply providing a voice-and-data pipe out to a customer and collecting a monthly fee no longer is a viable business model. Savvy mobile operators realize this and are deploying OSS/BSS solutions that enable them to analyze how prepaid, postpaid and hybrid customers are using their network and then creating tailored promotions and tariffs tailored to specific customers, the more personal the better." Beau Atwater in an…
Read More »"In 2013, many CSPs will partner with OTT players. For example, a mobile operator could provide a certain amount of bandwidth and prioritization to a video OTT provider that agrees to share revenue because the QoS would help differentiate its service." Beau Atwater in an article on BillingWorld I like what Beau is proposing here. Clearly OTT providers are a major threat to the incumbent telcos.…
Read More »"An After Action Review (AAR) is a structured review or de-brief process for analyzing what happened, why it happened, and how it can be done better, by the participants and those responsible for the project or event" Wikipedia. As an OSS consultant it has been common to move from one OSS project to the next for clients over the years. It is interesting that the knowledge…
Read More »"Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability." Edsger Dijkstra. Regular readers will note my stance on seeking simplicity in OSS. OSS have many moving parts - hardware, software, processes, people, interfaces, etc all have inherent complexity. But put them all together and you have the main reason why so many OSS projects go over time, over budget and/or fail to deliver against initial target objectives - they are just…
Read More »"The shifts of fortune tests the reliability of friends." Marcus T. Cicero. In yesterday's blog we discussed the concept of multi-homing. For some of the reasons discussed, you may not want duplication of data links. However, you may have one or more of your systems in cold-standby mode and want to be able to cut live data feeds across to it quickly in the event of…
Read More »“The greatest ability is dependability.” Robert "Bob" Jones. When it comes to reliability and resiliency of your OSS, the concept of multi-homing is vital. And by multi-homing, I'm not referring to the personal habits of a recent US President. For those who haven't heard of the term, it is the practice of network devices sending management traffic to more than one management node. For example, you…
Read More »“May your adventures bring you closer together, even as they take you far away from home.” Trenton Lee Stewart. During years of working on international project teams I've been lucky enough to have observed some fascinating group dynamics. OSS project teams form an interesting ecosystem from a group dynamic perspective, especially when there is a core project team of 10-20 people with various other occasional resources.…
Read More »"Maverick: I feel the need… Maverick, Goose: …the need for speed!" Lines from the movie Top Gun. Whilst listening to an audio book recently (sorry for the lack of reference, I forget which one) the author posed an interesting insight. Can you remember what type of vehicle Maverick (Tom Cruise) uses when being chased by Kelly McGillis' character Charlie Blackwood in Top Gun? Most who have…
Read More »"Software-defined networking (SDN) is an approach to computer networking which abstracts the hardware of the system, the control plane and the data plane" Wikipedia. SDN is another technology that is revolutionising OSS. It is having a dramatic effect on traditional CSPs, allowing them to move from being network-based Telcos to software-based services companies. It allows CSPs the ability to deliver new services via software rather than…
Read More »