"Mythology goes back, obviously, to ancient civilizations and it fulfilled a real role in providing us lessons in life and by giving us heroes and giving us villains and giving us stories. I did some research that sort of got me into this topic that was looking at things like flea markets, swap meets, and also antique dealers, and they said in each case that this…
Read More »"A long apprenticeship is the most logical way to success. The only alternative is overnight stardom, but I can't give you a formula for that." Chet Atkins. In an earlier post entitled "serving an apprenticeship," I spoke about the length of time it takes for each OSS newbie to reach a state of being productive. On complex OSS platforms, the ramp-up time is probably 6 months…
Read More »“…don’t ask your customers what they like or don’t like about your product. Or what they’d change if they could. That’s all about you. If you want really insightful answers, ask them about themselves instead. You can find out a ton about you by asking them about them.” Jason Fried. Let's say you were out on a first date and your lucky beau spent the whole…
Read More »"Most of the services being churned out today are long-tailed and flame out quickly, making them ill-suited to siloed management. A new philosophy of enablement is needed, suitable for an ecosystem where innovation could come from anywhere, and this is why the business support system must evolve into the business enablement suite (BES)." Jiao Aijun Aijun's quote was in reference to BSS making the transition to…
Read More »"Testing as a Service (TaaS) - People, process, accelerators, tools, technologies delivered in a consumable as-a-service model" Ahmed Adel in this Slideshare pack Testing as a Service has its merits for performing quality control on an OSS product set. It certainly provides greater resourcing flexibility and the swarm engineering model allows a faster time to revenue for product or project development. The following three variants support…
Read More »"Be aggressive in simplifying the BOSS to the bare minimum as customers are not seeing the difference of all the bells and whistles" Alan Quayle. Have you ever noticed that almost every B/OSS project is an upgrade, addition or a transformation? There are barely ever any reduction-only projects. I often wonder whether the large CSPs have got their priorities around the wrong way. Most of the…
Read More »"There was US$21.9B spent on games in the USA alone in 2012." NewZoo infographic [Please note: I've since been advised that this link to the infographic may be malware] According to the infographic, $2.1B was spent on Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games and $2.4B on mobile games alone. At the moment, these games tend to be monetised via subscription or up-front procurement of an app. But…
Read More »"We need to dedicate fewer of our resources to our traditional and core products as their profitability erodes and be ready to compete hard against an unprecedented number of new competitors and disruptive elements. They face none of the infrastructure, cost and regulatory pressure we do." Phil Jordan, Group CIO of Telefónica. The statement above is so obvious, yet I'd only ever thought of it by…
Read More »"Every operator needs to understand four key things about their data: What data do they have and what does it tell them about the customer? What further data can they reasonably collect and what is its value to the operator and to other players in the ecosystem? What can the operator do with it from a regulatory point of view and from the expectations of privacy…
Read More »"The digital world is much more fragmented – an ecosystem of different players each delivering their element of the service – with a different access network, core network, computing, storage and many applications providers. And where services comprise a number of aggregated application services, the challenges get even harder. If the only person getting the end-to-end picture of the overall service quality is the user, trouble…
Read More »"As markets grow, they fragment, forming distinct sub-markets that may break away from the parent market to become sustainable separate markets, with different products and services. Fragments start as small segments of customers with similar needs but for which there is no customized solution available. As a result they do not buy or make do with the best alternative. As the market grows, it becomes economically…
Read More »"You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you." Dale Carnegie. PassionateAboutOSS.com holds an OSS networking breakfast on the last Wednesday of every month in Melbourne, Australia for a bunch of people who are Passionate About OSS. Leave us a message on the Contact Us page…
Read More »"When someone discovered that the coffee bean made a tasty, refreshing drink, it was not necessary to do more than say so. Competition to sell coffee beans meant price wars and mergers and regulation and ethical dilemmas. Now, no-one sells their coffee beans as ‘cheaper’ – it is not ‘sustainable’ to do so. Coffee beans are sold on whether a range of sweet, hot milky drinks…
Read More »"The most corrosive piece of technology that I've ever seen is called television - but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent." Steve Jobs. In the television age, the first half saw the biggest margins going to the technology innovators. The technologies were the drivers and innovators reaped their rewards. TV sets, outside broadcast vans, television stations were expensive, transmission technologies, etc. But as the…
Read More »"Here’s a thought exercise for the audience: Imagine no Internet: no data on phones, no Ethernet or wi-fi connections at home — or anywhere. No email, no Google, no Facebook, no Skype. That’s what we would have if designing the Internet had been left up to phone and cable companies, and not to geeks whose names most people don’t know, and who made something no business…
Read More »"The other part of outsourcing is this: it simply says where the work can be done outside better than it can be done inside, we should do it." Alphonso Jackson. In this last of a nine-part series on non-traditional OSS markets, we touch on the possible business model differences to support and implement OSS. With a CSP, the business is focussed on delivering communication services. As…
Read More »"You must learn to talk clearly. The jargon of scientific terminology which rolls off your tongues is mental garbage." Martin H. Fischer. When implementing an OSS for a CSP, the communications network is the centre of the universe so all assets and their associated attributes and naming conventions revolve around the communications network. However, in a utility network, the communications network is generally just a support…
Read More »"I think I understand something about space. I think the job of a sculptor is spatial as much as it is to do with form." Anish Kapoor. Whilst a utility (eg rail, electricity, water, mining, etc) will have many facets of similarity with CSPs, the one major difference tends to be that it will have far fewer customers/subscribers on its network. This has a number of…
Read More »This page provides links to 10 techniques I've developed for Implementing an OSS
Read More »"The precision of naming takes away from the uniqueness of seeing." Pierre Bonnard. As mentioned in yesterday's blog, the non-CSP market is a fascinating one with regards to naming conventions. For CSPs, I recommend to start with some form of variation on the ITU M.1400 recommendation, as shown on the naming convention tool page. A communication network circuit will generally have an A-end and a B-end…
Read More »"Competitiveness demands flexibility, choice and openness" David Cameron Over the last four days, we've covered a number of aspects of introducing OSS into non-traditional customers. There is one major risk that awaits the vendor that broadens its customer net though. Whilst there are similarities at a node-arc-service model across many industries, there are also industry-specific challenges that await. For example, in the CSP industry, diverse path…
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