Today's is something of a heretical post, especially for the believers in ITIL. In the world of OSS, we look to build in layers of resiliency and not layers of redundancy. The following diagram and subsequent text in italics describes a typical ITIL process and is all taken from https://www.computereconomics.com/article.cfm?id=1074 The sequence of events as shown in Figure 1 is as follows: At TIME = 0, an…
Read More »"We need more teachers and less bosses." Lee Cockerell. The quote from Lee could be bordering on condescending to some people. Hmmm.... Sorry about that. But let me ask you a couple of questions: Of all your years in OSS (or in industry in general), who are the 5 people who have been the most valuable to you (and your customers)? Of those 5 people, which…
Read More »Have you sat on both sides of the OSS procurement process? That is, been an OSS buyer (eg writing an RFP) and an OSS seller (eg responded to an RFP) on separate projects? Have you noticed the amount of brain-power allocated to transferral of risk from both angles? If you're the buyer, you seek to transfer risk to the seller through clever RFP clauses. If you're…
Read More »Have you noticed an increasing presence of open-source tools in your OSS recently? Have you also noticed that open-source is helping to trigger transformation? Have you thought about why that might be? Some might rightly argue that it is the cost factor. You could also claim that they tend to help resolve specific, but common, problems. They're smaller and modular. I'd argue that the reason relates…
Read More »You already know that speed is important for OSS users. They / we don't want to wait for minutes for the OSS to respond to a simple query. That's obvious right? The bleeding obvious. But that's not what today's post is about. So then, what is it about? Actually, it follows on from yesterday's post about re-framing of OSS transformation. If a parallel pilot OSS can…
Read More »Friday's post posed a re-framing exercise that asked you (whether customer, seller or integrator) to run a planning exercise as if you MUST offer a money-back guarantee on your OSS (whether internal or external). It's designed to force a change in mindset from risk mitigation to risk removal. We have another re-framing exercise for you today. As we all know, incumbent OSS can be really difficult…
Read More »We've talked about some of the emotions we experience in the OSS industry earlier this week, the trauma of OSS and anxiety relating to OSS. To avoid these types of miserable feelings, it's human nature to seek to limit them. We over-analyse, we over-specify, we over-engineer, we over-document, we over-contract, we over-react, we over-estimate (nah, actually we almost never over-estimate do we?), we over-resource (well, actually,…
Read More »"Most people slog through their days in a dark funk. They almost never get to do anything interesting or go to interesting places or meet interesting people. They are ignored by marketers who want them to buy their overpriced junk and be grateful for it. They feel disrespected, unappreciated and taken for granted. Nobody wants to take the time to listen to their fears, dreams, hopes…
Read More »"You also have to understand their level of trauma. Your product, service or information is selling a solution to someone who is in trauma. There are different levels, from someone who needs a nail to finish the swing set in their backyard to someone who just found out they have a life-threatening disease. All of your customers had something happen in their life, where the problem…
Read More »As the TMN diagram below describes, each layer up in the network management stack abstracts but connects (as described in more detail in “What an OSS shouldn’t do“). That is, each higher layer reduces the amount if information/control within a domain that it’s responsible for, but it assumes a broader responsibility for connecting multiple domains together. There's just one problem with the diagram. It's a little dated when we take…
Read More »About 6-8 years ago, I was becoming achingly aware that I'd passed well beyond an information overload (I-O) threshold. More information was reaching my brain each day than I was able to assimilate, process and archive. What to do? Well, I decided to stop reading newspapers and watching the news, in fact almost all television. I figured that those information sources were empty calories for the…
Read More »Comarch Supports Creation of the IoT Ecosystem for Japanese Enterprises on Behalf of SCSK. The SCSK Corporation, one of the largest system integrators in Japan, has chosen Comarch as a partner to enrich its portfolio with IoT device management and monetization capabilities. Comarch will deliver elements of its IoT ecosystem offer, and related solutions, in order to accelerate SCSK’s Internet of Things’ business in Japan. SCSK…
Read More »This is the third in a series on ZTA, following on from yesterday's post that suggested intentionally triggering events to allow the accumulation of a much larger library of historical network data. Today we'll look at the impact of data collection on our ability to achieve ZTA and refer back to part 1 in the series too. Monitoring - There is monitoring the events that happen…
Read More »Yesterday we described the three steps on the path to Zero Touch Assurance: Monitoring - Monitoring the events that happen in the network and responding manually Post-cognition - Monitoring events / trends that happen in the network, comparing them to past situations (using analytics to identify repeating patterns), using the past to recommend (or automate) a response Pre-cognition - Identification of events / trends that have…
Read More »A couple of years ago, we published a series on pre-cognitive OSS based on the following quote by Ben Evans about three classes of search/discovery: There is giving you what you already know you want (Amazon, Google) There is working out what you want (Amazon and Google’s aspiration) And then there is suggesting what you might want (Heywood Hill). Today, I look to apply a similar model…
Read More »On Tuesday we pondered, "Would an OSS duopoly be a good thing?" It cited two examples of operating systems amongst other famous duopolies: Microsoft / Apple (PC operating systems) Google / Apple (smartphone operating systems) Yesterday we provided an example of why consolidation is so much more challenging for OSS companies than say for Coke or Pepsi. But maybe an operating system model could represent a…
Read More »Yesterday's post, "Would an OSS duopoly be a good thing?" talked about the benefits and challenges of consolidation of the number of suppliers in the OSS market. I also promised that today I'll share an example of the types of challenge that can be faced. An existing OSS supplier (Company A) had developed a significant foot-hold in the T1 telco market around Asia. They had quite…
Read More »Accenture Extends Collaboration with ONAP to Help Communications Industry Accelerate Transformation to Software-Based Networks. Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has extended its collaboration with LF Networking (LFN) — which facilitates collaboration and operational excellence across open networking projects, including the Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) — upgrading its membership to Gold level status as part of its strategy to build a comprehensive “as-a-service” solution for the software-defined ecosystem.…
Read More »The products/vendors page here on PAOSS has a couple of hundred entries currently. We're currently working on an extended list that will almost double the number on it. More news on that shortly. The level of fragmentation fascinates me, but if I'm completely honest, it probably disappoints me too. It's great that it's providing the platform for a long-tail of innovation. It's exciting that there's so…
Read More »On Friday, we published a post entitled, "Think for a moment..." which posed the question of whether we might be better-served looking back at our most important existing features and streamlining them rather than inventing new features to solve that have little impact. Over the weekend, a promotional email landed in my inbox from Nightingale Conant. It is completely unrelated to OSS, yet the steps outlined…
Read More »IBM Services Strikes Agreement with Juniper Networks to Speed its Journey to the Cloud. IBM Services announced a $325 million agreement with Juniper Networks in which IBM will assist the network technology giant in managing its existing infrastructure, applications and IT services to help reduce costs and enhance their journey to the cloud. According to a recent report from IBM's Institute for Business Value, nearly all…
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