Passionate About OSS Blog | Passionate About OSS and BSS

The differences between Inventory, Asset and Config Management in an OSS

We recently discussed the differences between PNI (Physical Network Inventory) and LNI (Logical Network Inventory) solutions that appear as part of many OSS (Operational Support System) stacks. As promised, today we'll talk about the subtle differences between: Network Inventory Management Systems Asset Management Systems and Configuration Management Databases (CMDB) We even discuss: Virtual Infrastructure (VIM) and Resource Managers Config Managers (different from CMDB) TM Forum's four…

14/02/2020 4 Comments

Bleak sentiments

"People in a tough spot often focus on their own problems, when the answer usually lies in fixing someone else’s."Steve Schwarzman. The telco industry is in a tough spot in many areas around the globe. Sadly, there were more stories of wholesale retrenchments here in Australia this week, including good friends. Revenues falling. Sentiment bleak. Yet it's not like most declining industries. Telecom services and remote…

11/02/2020 No Comments

Hello Trouble!

Hello, Trouble. It's been a while since we last met. But I know you're still out there. And I have a feeling you're looking for me. You wish I'd forget ya.. Don't ya trouble? Perhaps it is you, that has forgotten me. Perhaps I need to come find you. Remind you, who I am. Sounds like an apt mindset for working in the OSS industry doesn't…

10/02/2020 No Comments

OSS discovers a network

Following yesterday's post about OSS Inventory, I received another great follow-up question from another avid reader of the PAOSS blog: "Interesting thoughts Ryan! In addition to 'faults up', perhaps there is a case also (obvious?) for 'discovery up' to capture ongoing non-planned changes? Wondering have you come across any sort of reconciliation / adaptive inventory patterns like this? Workflow based? Autonomous? (Going to far into chaos…

04/02/2020 2 Comments

Various forms of OSS Inventory

After reading other recent posts such as "Orders Down, Faults Up" and "How is OSS/BSS service and resource availability supposed to work?" an avid reader of the PAOSS blog posed the following brilliant question: "Do you have any thoughts on geospatial vs non geospatial network inventory systems? How often do you see physical plant mapping in a separate system from network inventory, with linkages or integrations…

03/02/2020 2 Comments

In need of an OSS transformation translator

As OSS Architects, we have an array of elegant frameworks to call upon when designing our transformational journeys - from current state to a target state architecture. For example, when providing data mapping, we have tools to prepare current and/or target-state data diagrams such as the following: Source here. These diagrams are really elegant and powerful for communicating with other data experts and delivery teams. It's…

29/01/2020 No Comments

New functionality added to Blue Book OSS/BSS Vendor Directory

We're excited to announce the release of some new functionality on The Blue Book OSS/BSS Vendor Directory (which now hosts nearly 450 different OSS/BSS supplier listings). We've introduced: An Industry News feed If you wish to publish news / press-releases on products, contract wins, changes in ownership structure, job advertisements, tradeshow attendance or any other related news, you can click here to create a news item (note that…

20/01/2020 No Comments

Orders down, faults up (and the TMN Pyramid)

As mentioned in a post about Service and Resource Availability last week, I do tend to think of OSS workflows around an “orders down, faults up,” flow direction. And that means customers (services) at the top, network (resources) at the bottom of the (TMN) pyramid [see more about the TMN pyramid reference at the end of this article]. OSS/BSS Data Flows I also think of inventory…

14/01/2020 No Comments

Setting a challenge for clever OSS Architects

Back in the old days, there was really only one OSS build model - via big milestone/functionality delivery. You followed a waterfall style delivery where you designed the end-solution up-front, then tried to build, test and handover to that design. The business value was delivered at the end of the project (or perhaps major phases along the way). For the large operators, there may have been…

13/01/2020 2 Comments

Differences between CFS and RFS

Further to yesterday’s post about Service and Resource Availability, I received some questions about how to discern between CFS (Customer Facing Services) and RFS (Resource Facing Services) in relation to Fulfillment workflows. Then more specifically, how they relate to Service Order (SO), Service Order Manager (SOM), Product Catalog and Service Catalog solutions. Then finally how they relate to the orchestration or decomposition process. I thought the following diagram,…

09/01/2020 No Comments

How is OSS/BSS service and resource availability supposed to work?

The brilliant question above was asked by a contact who is about to embark on a large OSS/BSS transformation. That's certainly a challenging question to start the new year with!! The following was provided for a little more context: We have a manually maintained table for each address where we can store which services are available—ie. DSL up to 5 Mbps or Fiber Data 300 Mbps…

08/01/2020 16 Comments

Developing an OSS Training Plan

Last year a tier-1 telco asked me to develop a training / mentoring plan for graduates entering their OSS stream. Not just a short-term training plan, but a 4-5 year career development model for their team. They're setting aside approximately a day a week for personal development for each trainee entering the program. That blew me away. I was so impressed that they were willing to…

06/01/2020 No Comments

OSS sell money!

Huh? But they're just cost centres aren't they? Nope, they sell financial outcomes - they reduce downtime, they turn on revenue, they improve productivity by coordinating the workforce, etc... But they only "sell money" if they can help stakeholders clearly see the money! I mean "actually" see it, not "read between the lines" see it! (so many benefits of OSS are intangible, so we…

18/12/2019 No Comments

What’s in your OSS for me?

May I ask you a question? Do the senior executives at your organisation ever USE your OSS/BSS? I'd love to hear your answer. My guess is that few, if any, do. Not directly anyway. They may depend on reports whose data comes from our OSS, but is that all? Execs are ultimately responsible for signing off large budget allocations (in CAPEX and OPEX) for our OSS.…

17/12/2019 No Comments

ETSI Open Source MANO unveils Release SEVEN

ETSI Open Source MANO unveils Release SEVEN, enables more than 20,000 cloud-native applications for NFV environments! The ETSI Open Source MANO group is pleased to unveil its latest release, OSM Release SEVEN. This release brings cloud-native applications to NFV deployments, enabling OSM to on-board over 20,000 pre-existing production-ready Kubernetes applications, with no need of any translation or repackaging. OSM release SEVEN allows you to combine within…

16/12/2019 No Comments

The Ineffective OSS Scoreboard Analogy

Imagine for a moment that you're the coach of a sporting team. You train your team and provide them with a strategy for the game. You send them out onto the court and let them play. The scoreboard gives you all of the stats about each player. Their points, blocks, tackles, heart-rate, distance covered, errors, etc. But it doesn't show the total score for each team…

13/12/2019 No Comments

One big requirement category most OSS can’t meet

We talked yesterday about a range of OSS products that are more outcome-driven than our typically transactional OSS tools. There's not many of them around at this stage. I refer to them as "data bridge" products. Our typical OSS tools help manage transactions (alarms, activate customers services, etc). They're generally not so great at (directly) managing objectives such as: Sign up an extra 50,000 customers…

12/12/2019 No Comments

Do you want funding on an OSS project?

OSS tend to be very technical and transactional in nature. For example, a critical alarm happens, so we have to coordinate remedial actions as soon as possible. Or, a new customer has requested service so we have to coordinate the workforce to implement certain tasks in the physical and logical/virtual world. When you spend so much of your time solving transactional / tactical problems, you tend…

11/12/2019 No Comments

An OSS checksum

Yesterday's post discussed two waves of decisions stemming from our increasing obsession with data collection. "...the first wave had [arisen] because we'd almost all prefer to make data-driven decisions (ie decisions based on "proof") rather than "gut-feel" decisions. We're increasingly seeing a second wave come through - to use data not just to identify trends and guide our decisions, but to drive automated actions." Unfortunately, the…

10/12/2019 No Comments

Riffing with your OSS

Data collection and data science is becoming big business. Not just in telco - our OSS have always been one of the biggest data gatherers around - but across all sectors that are increasingly digitising (should I just say, "all sectors" because they're all digitising?). Why do you think we're so keen to collect so much data? I'm assuming that the first wave had mainly been…

09/12/2019 No Comments

OSS diamonds are forever (part 2)

Wednesday's post discussed how OPEX is forever, just like the slogan for diamonds. As discussed, some aspects of Operational Expenses are well known when kicking off a new OSS project (eg annual OSS license / support costs). Others can slip through the cracks - what I referred to as OPEX leakage (eg third-party software, ongoing maintenance of software customisations). OPEX leakage might be an…

06/12/2019 No Comments

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