Passionate About OSS Blog | Passionate About OSS and BSS

How to establish a programmatic interface to passive equipment?

“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…

25/11/2012 No Comments

Competitive Differentiation

"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…

24/11/2012 No Comments

KISS your OctopOSS

“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!)"…

23/11/2012 No Comments

Thrash hard

“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…

22/11/2012 No Comments

Location-based Services

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…

22/11/2012 No Comments

Weapons of Mass Instruction

"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…

21/11/2012 No Comments

Graphical vs hot-keys

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…

20/11/2012 No Comments

Merging OSS / BSS?

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…

19/11/2012 No Comments

Selling the “Why?”

"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…

18/11/2012 No Comments

World’s Best Practice in OSS*

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…

17/11/2012 No Comments

Context-sensitive data. An OSS tester’s dilemma

“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…

16/11/2012 No Comments

You get back what you put in

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…

14/11/2012 No Comments

Building a Business Case

"Selling is not telling, selling is asking" Zig Ziglar Over the years of acting as a strategic advisor to customers on new OctopOSS projects, it only recently dawned on me that there have typically been two gaping omissions: The customer rarely has a compelling business case in mind before diving into the project (they invariably have sound technical drivers though) and I've never seen a vendor pitch…

13/11/2012 No Comments

Planning your OctopOSS

Looking for some ideas on how to start planning your new OctopOSS project? I've just uploaded some sample WBS diagrams, showing how I use them as a planning tool. Refer to the following link.

13/11/2012 No Comments

Building Sandcastles

"Make your product easier to buy than your competition, or you will find your customers buying from them, not you." Mark Cuban I’m a great advocate of building a sand-pit environment for the customer to use as early as possible in a project’s life-cycle, even during pre-sales if possible. Using the sand-pit will develop customer trust in the product and excitement for what will be forthcoming.…

12/11/2012 No Comments

The learned customer

"If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else." Booker T. Washington From my experience in OSS vendor evaluation, most vendors's marketing collateral makes you read between the lines of fluffy-marketing-speak to identify the real functionalities and benefits of their products. In the connected world, a company is going to do a great deal of research before even speaking with you for the first…

11/11/2012 No Comments

Positive Psychology

"The worst times can be the best if you think with positive energy" Domenico Dolce OctopOSS projects can be highly stressful workplaces, especially as "dreadlines" approach. To exacerbate this further, it is common for the OSS project team (particularly the vendor's implementation team) to comprise of many members who are working away from home and their associated support mechanisms. Team development often focuses on building a…

10/11/2012 No Comments

Are your interfaces truly enabled?

"Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose." Zora Neale Hurston I once worked on an OctopOSS project where a previous consultant had performed an audit on the wide variety of network equipment in a carrier’s network. He had identified the interfaces that were available on these devices and had prepared a list of each. The OSS vendor was making good progress, having reached…

08/11/2012 No Comments

Planting Seeds

Developing a customer's trust in a product to the point that they're willing to make a purchase is difficult with OSS tools. The trick is to build advocates in the industry or become the big brand. Common approach is to pick the fruit that’s already grown (ie the RFP) rather than planting seeds. The last-minute pitch (picking the fruit) is not the best answer, albeit a…

07/11/2012 No Comments

OSS Interface Roadmap Tool

The OSS Interface Roadmap tool has now been uploaded under the Tools menu item of the PassionateAboutOSS website.