"If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all." Michelangelo It strikes me that the worker of today focuses on an ever-narrower field of specialisation. Cross-functional teams offer a means of cross-pollenisation of ideas between specialists in their fields but does each individual in the team still have their own blinkered view of the situation? By contrast,…
Read More »"The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency." Bill Gates Variation is the enemy of continual improvement, so once your OSS is operational you are seeking conformity, continuity, reliability and ever improving efficiencies. In contrast, as a vendor…
Read More »“If I was slashed and cut into pieces, over and over again, and put into the mill and ground into flour, burnt by fire and mixed with ashes - even then, I could not estimate Your Value.” Sri Guru Granth Sahib You ask all the difficult questions don't you? Actually, "how much will this cost" is a common question asked by organisations that is about to…
Read More »"The Navy has both a tradition and a future--and we look with pride and confidence in both directions." Admiral George Anderson In days gone by, CSPs enjoyed command of the sea. Their boats were big, powerful and mobile enough to move around world. However, due to their size it requires significant planning and effort for a CSP to change direction. The newer DSP, OTT and content communications…
Read More »“For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning.” T.S. Eliot Happy new year! 2013 is the year that PassionateAboutOSS.com is officially launched. This blog-roll will continue to pose another voice, making a beginning towards a better OctopOSS
Read More »“Operators are currently at a beginner’s level of capability exposure for developers. They need to step up their game, look at how enterprises have solved this problem. Deliver a rich, secure, reliable, well managed API framework that makes applications both cool and reliable over their networks, else developers will simply choose OTT providers” Sean O’Sullivan Incumbent CSPs are under threat of losing revenue share to OTT…
Read More »"Over 60 years ago, broadcast television introduced channels 1-10 in the U.S., and, furthering this momentum, channelization provided channels 11-1,000 via cable and satellite in the 1980s. As this decade is earmarked by seismic technology and media changes, the next few years will be laser-focused on creating the next 100,000 channels – delivered across a mix of broadcast, cable, mobile and smart TV apps – each…
Read More »“I am not a teacher, but an awakener.” Robert Frost In recent years there has been a proliferation of professional mentoring in many fields of business. I just did a Google search and didn't find a single OSS mentor. A keyword search showed that nobody was looking for one either. It seems there is no demand, hence no supply. If Tiger Woods perceived the need for…
Read More »"For Porter, the ultimate profit potential of an industry is a finite fixed amount: the only question is who is going to get which share of it.Sound business is however unlike warfare or sports in that one company’s success does not require its rivals to fail. Unlike competition in sports, every company can choose to invent its own game. As Joan Magretta points out, a better…
Read More »"Even if you're Apple, it's not about you" Sonia Simone In a healthy personal relationship, each partner is approximately equal. In a healthy business relationship, there is a vast difference in balance. As a business, if you: Listen to the customer far more than you talk Give more time and attention to your customer base than they give to you Are more considerate of the customer's…
Read More »"When you think you can't, revisit a previous triumph.". Jack Canfield Just as naming conventions are important within the OctopOSS at an application level, so are numbering plans at a network level. The OctopOSS often introduces as significant increase in IP addresses allocated to network management (eg on the management VLAN). For the purpose of route summarisation (simpler routing troubleshooting, more efficient routing, faster convergence after…
Read More »"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead Christmas Day would seem like an appropriate day to discuss a guiding coalition. A new OctopOSS project will need a large stakeholder body to be highly organised and excited about the project’s outcomes, not just at project commencement, but through the dramas…
Read More »“Whatever you do in life, surround yourself with smart people who’ll argue with you.” John Wooden Change, innovation and product improvement comes from the collision of ideas from a diversity of thoughts. Art, industrial design, logistics, mathematics, computing, storage, automation – all these industries have improvements to offer to OSS. Surrounding yourself with visionaries and mentors from outside your company helps to promote the ideas, dreams,…
Read More »"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty." Henry Ford Henry Ford is widely acknowledged for creating the production line that revolutionised the automobile industry, bringing cars within financial reach of the common man. However, Ford's autobiography states that he borrowed the idea from the "disassembly" lines used by Armour for processing meat. He then called upon Frederick Taylor, the creator of "scientific…
Read More »"Remind people that profit is the difference between revenue and expense. This makes you look smart." Dilbert In times when it is difficult to find money for new OctopOSS projects, revenue protection / fraud detection / leakage analysis could potentially bring quick payback. I was once indirectly involved in an OSS project worth several million US dollars. The customer was ecstatic but also concerned that their…
Read More »"Combine the extremes, and you will have the true center." Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Are we already starting to see the merging of BSS (customer facing systems) and OSS (network facing systems)? Since carriers are going to be asked by customers to be increasingly transparent, they will need to deliver combined information across the B/OSS. From a customer perspective, it might be a single view of…
Read More »"The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery." Plato Training is only useful if it is context-sensitive and interactive. If you want the best results from training, you have to build customised training for the specific customer environment (ie equipment types, service types, naming conventions, etc). If a load from production data (or a subset thereof) can be facilitated into the training…
Read More »"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence." Richard Dawkins Evaluating OSS vendors is never an easy task. There are virtually no apples-for-apples comparisons, even within domains (eg alarm/fault management). Each product set has different features, support, etc. Despite this, I have used an approach similar to this Vendor Selection Workflow for a number of customers The…
Read More »"Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability." Edsger Dijkstra This is the last in this "So, what is it going to be?" series. Do you need your OctopOSS to be highly available (HA), with mullti-site failover, redundancy mechanisms, constant data sych, etc? Or is your OctopOSS non mission critical and doesn't require a DR (Disaster Recovery) site, doesn't need complex data duplication and only requires best effort support and…
Read More »“Products are evaluated, services are experienced” Ken Rutsky So, what's it going to be? Will you have your OctopOSS in your own cage (ie on your site) - the SaaP (Software as a Product) model. Or will you rent your OctopOSS from someone else - the SaaS (Software as a Service) model? What are the implications of each? Software as a Service (SaaS) SaaS is a…
Read More »“Striving for perfection is the greatest stopper there is. It's your excuse to yourself for not doing anything. Instead, strive for excellence, doing your best.” Sir Laurence Olivier So, what is it going to be? Is your OctopOSS going to be built using the "best of breed" approach (ie the best available product) for each aspect of your OSS (eg Fault Management, Performance Management, Inventory, etc)?…
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