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Five new OSS/BSS automation design rules from Elon Musk

Automation has become a big buzz-word in OSS architecture. It's all about the automation. At face value that's great, it's triggering an implication of bringing tangible business value to our OSS.... Except sometimes it's not. Our industry consists of so many incredibly clever engineers who love solving problems, which is great. The problem with automations is our engineers can leap straight to the automation as being…

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07/10/2021 No Comments

Zooming in and out of your OSS

Our previous post talked about using the following frame of reference to think bigger about our OSS/BSS projects and their possibilities. It's the multitudes of experts at Level 1 that get projects done and products released. All hail the doers!! As Rory Sutherland indicated in his book, Alchemy - The surprising power of ideas that don't make sense, "No one complained that Darwin was being trivial…

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14/09/2021 No Comments

How to take in OSS/BSS’s Bigger Picture

We had a planned power outage at our place yesterday, so I thought I'd use that as an opportunity to get out of the details of projects and do a day of longer-term strategy and planning. In the days prior, I decided to investigate frameworks that might help to get me into a bigger-picture and/or lateral-thinking mindset. I'd already set aside three books from my bookshelf…

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10/09/2021 No Comments

How we fall in love with our OSS ideas

Do you know what it is that people like / love about your OSS/BSS?Why they buy it? Why they use it? What problem it solves? How it makes their life easier? If you do, how do you know?Do you speak with its users? Do you survey them? Do you spend time with them observing how they use your product? Is it just the "vibe" you get?…

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08/09/2021 No Comments

The confused mind says no – the psychology of OSS purchasing

When it comes to OSS/BSS vendor selections, a typical customer might say they're evaluating vendors on criteria that are a mix of technical and commercial (and other) factors. However, there's more likely a much bigger and often hidden factor that drives a purchasing event. We'll explore what that is shortly. I'm currently reading the book, Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense. It…

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27/07/2021 No Comments

OSS Sandpit – Radio Planning Exercise

Wireless or radio technologies are making waves (sorry for the awful pun) at the moment. The telco world is abuzz with the changes being brought about by 5G, IoT, LEO satellite and other related tech. They all rely on radio frequency (RF) to carry their all-important communications information. This article provides an example of preparing RF coverage maps by using the inventory module of our Personal OSS Sandpit…

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26/07/2021 No Comments

Are you kidding? We’ll never use open-source OSS/BSS!

Back in the days when I first started using OSS/BSS software tools, there was no way any respectable telco was going to use open-source software (the other oss, for which I'll use lower-case in this article) in their OSS/BSS stacks. The arguments were plenty, and if we're being honest, probably had a strong element of truth in many cases back then. These arguments included: Security -…

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22/07/2021 No Comments

How to calculate the right jeopardy metrics in your end-to-end workflows

Last week we created an article that described how to use your OSS/BSS log data to generate reliable / quantifiable process flow diagrams. We've expanded upon this research to identify a reliable calculation of jeopardy metrics. Jeopardy Management is the method for notifying operators when an in-flight workflow (eg customer order, etc) is likely to breach targets such as RFS date (ie when the customer's service…

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20/07/2021 No Comments

How to Document, Benchmark and Optimise Operational Processes

Have you been tasked with: Capturing as-is process flows (eg swim-lane charts or BPMN [Business Process Model and Notation] diagrams) Starting a new project where understanding the current state is important Finding ways to optimise day-to-day activities performed by your team Creating a baseline process to identify automation opportunities Comparing your current processes with recommendations such as eTOM or ITIL Identifying which tasks are leading to…

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15/07/2021 No Comments

019 – Modern OSS/BSS Transformation Techniques that start with the Customer Journey with Martin Pittard

Digital transformation is a term that's entered the modern vernacular, but here in the world of OSS/BSS it's just what we've been doing for decades. Whether aimed at delivering digital services, collecting data from all points of an organisation's compass, increasing the internal efficiencies of operational teams or improving user experiences externally, this is just what our OSS/BSS tools and projects do. Our guest on today's…

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05/07/2021 No Comments

How to improve user experience with a headless OSS

The first OSS/BSS I used, back in 2000, was built around an Oracle relational database and the GUI was built using Oracle Forms (as well as some C++ apps). The developers had implemented a concept they referred to as a boilerplate. It basically allowed the customers to modify any label they wished on the forms. When I say labels, I mean any of the default text…

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30/06/2021 No Comments

018 – How a NaaS Transformation can Revolutionise your OSS_BSS Stack with Johanne Mayer

OSS/BSS stacks can be incredibly complex and cumbersome beasts, especially in large carriers with many different product, process and network variants. We don't make that task any easier by creating many unique product offerings to take to market. And this time to market can be a significant competitive advantage, or be a serious impediment to it. NaaS, or Network as a Service, is a novel approach…

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28/06/2021 No Comments

Just Launched: Do you Want to Learn more about OSS/BSS?

The world of OSS/BSS is changing rapidly. There's so much to learn. New forms of information, approaches and technologies are proliferating. Are you wrestling with the challenge of trying to determine what OSS/BSS training you and/or your team requires? We've just revised and re-launched our core OSS/BSS training offerings. Click on the image below to open the OSS/BSS Training Plan, which includes details about each course…

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24/06/2021 No Comments

How Network Operations Centre (NOC) Efficiency is Powered by Your OSS/BSS

We just launched a new video series describing the Fundamentals of OSS/BSS yesterday. One of the videos in the series describes Network Operations Centres (or NOCs) for telcos or network operators. It also provides examples of the OSS/BSS tools and data sets that help to power them.  Whilst creating this video, it dawned on me that we've done over 2,500 posts, but none specifically about Network…

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11/06/2021 No Comments

Just Launched: Fundamentals of OSS/BSS Video

We’ve just launched a multi-part video series to provide an introduction to OSS and BSS. It answers these fundamental questions and more: Part 1 - What is an OSS? What is a BSS? Why are OSS and BSS even a thing? Part 2 - Who uses an OSS and/or BSS? Part 3 - What Functions do OSS and BSS Perform? Part 4 - What Business Benefits do OSS/BSS Generate? Part…

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09/06/2021 No Comments

016 – Leading the Network Strategy and Operations at a Tier 1 Carrier with Carolyn Phiddian

If the network is ultimately the product for any network operator, then OSS/BSS are the great connectors, connecting customers to that product. Both for initial activation, but also ongoing utilisation of network resources. Whilst everyone has a different perspective on the relevance / importance of OSS/BSS, there tend to be even broader divergences of opinion across networks, operations and executive teams. Our guest on this episode,…

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07/06/2021 No Comments

How to Transform your OSS/BSS with Open APIs

The video below, starring Martin Pittard, the Principal IT Architect at Vocus Group, provides a number of important OSS/BSS Transformation call-outs that we'll dive into in this article. Vocus has embarked on a journey to significantly overhaul its OSS/BSS stack and has heavily leveraged TM Forum's Open API suite to do so. One of the primary objectives of the overhaul was to provide Vocus with business agility…

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02/06/2021 No Comments

015 – Using Modern OSS/BSS Architectures to get Offerings to Market Fast with Greg Tilton

When it comes to OSS/BSS implementations (and products), Time to Market (TTM) is one of our most important metrics. Not just for the network operator to deliver new offerings to market, but also in getting solutions up and running quickly. Faster TTM provides the benefits of cost reduction and faster turn-on of revenue, but potentially allows the operator beat competitors to the acquisition of new customers.…

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31/05/2021 No Comments

014 – The challenges and pitfalls awaiting OSS implementation teams with Michael De Boer

There are three distinct categories of organisations that interact with OSS/BSS - those who create them, those who use them and those who implement them. But no matter how good the first two are (ie the products / creators and the users), if the implementation isn't done well, then the OSS/BSS is almost pre-destined to fail. There are many, many challenges and pitfalls that await implementation…

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24/05/2021 No Comments

013 – Using a Commercial and Open Source approach to Tackle Network Assurance with Keith Sinclair

Have you noticed the rise in trust, but also the rise in sophistication in Open Source OSS/BSS in recent years? There are many open-source OSS/BSS tools out there. Some have been built as side-projects by communities that have day jobs, whilst others have many employed developers / contributors. Generally speaking, the latter are able to employ developers because they have a reliable revenue stream to support…

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17/05/2021 No Comments