“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” Socrates Where is the ubiquitous source of OSS information to help newbies light their fire? Books? Whilst I have seen many fantastic OSS books that fill many hundreds of pages, there is still so much left to be told. Most of these books cover technologies that will soon enough be superseded by the…
Read More »"Garbage In, Garbage Out" Computer Industry Proverb Let me ask you the following questions: Are you having data accuracy problems, particularly in your Outside Plant Network? Are your network operators and planners losing faith in the data stored in your NMS/OSS and having to adopt workarounds that cause further degradation of data integrity? Worse still, are they wasting time on lengthy audits to determine whether the live network matches…
Read More »"An elephant doesn't canter" Proverb Are the CSPs becoming too afraid to make major OSS transformations? Have they tried and failed previously? Have the seen their peers try and fail? Are their OctopOSS just too large, too complex and too unwieldy to make significant upgrades without introducing major cost, schedule, brand and reliability risks? In some cases I believe that all of the above are true.…
Read More »"63% of all statistics are made up... including this one" Dilbert A CSP I know has a detailed set of KPIs assigned to the various parts of its provisioning factory. A key customer of that CSP was given the highest priority of orders through the provisioning factory by the CSP's CEO. But after a year, almost none of the orders had made their way through the…
Read More »"It's never crowded along the extra mile." Dr. Wayne Dyer As a vendor, it's your objective to make the product easier to buy. There are usually many reviewers within a CSP. Understand the reasons why each one of them could say no. Remove the standard reasons that a company can delay. Fear of choosing the wrong product. Large capital outlay that locks into long-term commitment, Lack…
Read More »"Change is good. You go first." Dilbert If you're implementing an OSS, you're already being changed whether you like it or not, as is your organisation. The reason you're implementing an OSS project is because someone somewhere within the organisation thought the change will be for the betterment of the organisation. But it is highly likely that the are people within the organisation who don't want…
Read More »"You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today" Abraham Lincoln The term "out of the box" is one that is regularly heard in vendor sales pitches. The term can be convincing to the customer, but conniving to the implementers. In my opinion, there is no such thing as "out of the box" functionality. The term gives the impression that the applications can be installed and the CSP…
Read More »"I think this job in particular allows us all to be Holmes-ian; eccentric and imaginative and creative and to think out of the box. Real life, away from work, requires us to be slightly more Dr. John Watson." Jude Law Implementing an OSS requires both of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's great characters. It requires the imaginative, the creative, the inquisitive, the analytical, the detective that is…
Read More »"An important factor regarding the adoption rate of an innovation is its compatibility with the values, beliefs, and past experiences of individuals in the social system" Everett Rogers Is your company built around being an Innovator or early adopter with regards to network technologies, service offerings, process, etc? If so, what impact does sailing the blue ocean have on your OSS strategy? Whilst OSS vendors generally try to design their…
Read More »“Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself- and thus make yourself indispensable.” André Gide CSPs have installed Network Management Systems (NMS) to manage their active network equipment, receiving near-real-time data feeds from these devices, allowing the operator to understand their current status. This allows the company to “discover” and manage network assets automatically using the NMS. However for most network operators, they have…
Read More »"If you want to be around in 10 years you've got to do something to differentiate yourself from the pack." Chris Evans In Building a Business Case we indicated examples of the business case models that can be used to build a compelling story for implementing a new OctopOSS, including: Brand security (ie being able to respond to faults expediently and avoid brand damage via major…
Read More »“KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid.” It’s an open acknowledgment of a tendency we all have: to make things much more complicated than they need to be. After all, it’s much more fun – and still leaves room for other addictions, like procrastination, perfection and control – to engage in mental masturbation. (Oh dear, did I just write that!?!? Yes, I did. Maybe it’ll boost my SEO!)"…
Read More »“Every software project that has missed its target date (every single one) is a victim of late thrashing,...The creators didn’t have the discipline to force all the thrashing at the beginning.” Seth Godin So you're starting up your OctopOSS... It's a complex beast, with many different features. It impacts many different parts of the business. It will touch the working lives of many. The many will all…
Read More »Bandwidth is ubiquitous and is becoming increasingly commoditised. So how will the CSPs of the future differentiate and build profitable services? One model is based on content. CSPs could potentially buy the rights to high-value content (eg live football games) and offer this as an exclusive service to their customers (and any new customer that desires access to the content). To take this a step further, premium content…
Read More »"The path to success is to take massive, determined action." Tony Robbins Carriers / service providers potentially have access to a massive amount of data. There is a growing need amongst a CSP's customers for real-time data that is transparent and valuable to their business needs, particularly those that are dependent on communication technologies. CSP's traditional relational databases store information in a structured, pre-defined way. But what…
Read More »To all the network rectification gurus out there, the NOC operators, the fault/assurance teams, I'd like to pose a question. Do you prefer a user interface that is graphical, point and click, has drill-down capability or do you prefer a series of hot-keys so that your quick-fire key-strokes can resolve the issue faster? I personally love the GUI, particularly circuit and network diagramming tools that allow me…
Read More »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 commercial and network functionality, even if it is a consolidated dashboard view from disparate…
Read More »"People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe." Simon Sinek. In Simon Sinek's book, "Start with Why: How great leaders inspire everyone to take action," he discusses visionaries in sales and marketing. The "Why?" refers to the need to sell values, advantages, and benefits instead of features. Vendor and customer alike often get bogged…
Read More »When it comes to OSS projects, I’ve worked in a dozen countries and been involved in almost every role including: Chief Technical Officer Program / Project Manager Strategic Advisor External Consultant Enterprise Architect (across solutions including inventory, discovery, alarms, performance, provisioning, traffic engineering, line test management, service management, GIS / spatial tools, ticketing, service management, billing, etc) Deployment Manager Network Subject Matter Expert (SME) (across networks…
Read More »“It’s more important to have the right people involved than it is to follow the process exactly right.“ Rex Black Just as vendors have learnt the importance of context-sensitive help, there is also the need for context-sensitive training and context-sensitive testing (and context-sensitive everything else for that matter). I once worked on a project where a team of about 20 testers flew into the country, stayed…
Read More »There is an old parable [from Earl Nightingale] about a man is sitting in front of a cold, empty fireplace and demanding, “Give me heat!” Obviously, you must first put fuel in the hearth and light a fire before you can expect to get any warmth. The same holds true for OctopOSS projects. You only get out what you put in. Customers need to be deeply…
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