Passionate About OSS Blog | Passionate About OSS and BSS

Is your data getting too heavy for your OSS to lift?

"Data mass is beginning to exhibit gravitational properties – it’s getting heavy – and eventually it will be too big to move." Guy Lupo in this article on TM Forum's Inform that also includes contributions from George Glass and Dawn Bushaus. Really interesting concept, and article, linked above. The touchpoint explosion is helping to make our data sets ever bigger... and heavier. In my earlier days…

09/11/2018 No Comments

Are telco services and SLAs no longer relevant?

I wonder if we're reaching the point where "telecommunication services" is no longer a relevant term? By association, SLAs are also a bust. But what are they replaced by? A telecommunication service used to effectively be the allocation of a carrier's resources for use by a specific customer. Now? Well, less so Service consumption channel alternatives are increasing, from TV and radio; to PC, to mobile,…

08/11/2018 No Comments

Are you heading to Digital Transformation Asia (the new name for TM Forum Live Asia!)?

DTA - TM Forum's Digital Transformation Asia event (https://dta.tmforum.org/) is almost upon us already. Held in Kuala Lumpur from 13-15 November, there are some really interesting looking talks on the agenda (https://dta.tmforum.org/agenda). I'm looking forward to being overwhelmed by the collective genius that is sure to be in attendance. Will you be making an appearance?

08/11/2018 No Comments

Does Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours apply to OSS?

You've probably all heard of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule from his book, Outliers? In it he suggests that roughly 10,000 hours of deliberate practice makes an individual world-class in their field. But is 10,000 hours enough in the field of OSS? I look back to the year 2000, when I first started on OSS projects. Over the following 5 years or so, I averaged an…

06/11/2018 No Comments

Presence vs omni-presence and the green button of OSS design

In OSS there are some tasks that require availability (the green button on communicator). The Network Operations Centre (NOC) is one. But does it require on-site presence in the NOC? An earlier post showed how wrong I was about collaboration rooms. It seems that ticket flicking (and perhaps communication tools like slack) is the preferred model. If this is the preferred model, then perhaps there is…

02/11/2018 No Comments

Intent to simplify our OSS

The left-hand panel of the triptych below shows the current state of interactions with most OSS. There are hundreds of variants inbound via external sources (ie multi-channel) and even internal sources (eg different service types). Similarly, there are dozens of networks (and downstream systems), each with different interface models. Each needs different formatting and integration costs escalate. The intent model of network provisioning standardises the network…

01/11/2018 No Comments

Telco services that are bigger, faster, better and the OSS that supports that

We all know of the tectonic shifts in the world of telco services, profitability and business models. One common trend is for telcos to offer pipes that are bigger and faster. Seems like a commoditising business model to me, but our OSS still need to support that. How? Through enabling efficiency at scale. Building tools, GUIs, workflows, integrations, sales pipelines, etc that enable telcos march seamlessly…

31/10/2018 No Comments

Who are more valuable, OSS hoarders or teachers?

Any long-term readers of this blog will have heard me talk about tripods, and how valuable they are to any OSS team. They're the people who know about IT, operations/networks and the business context within which they're working. They're the most valuable people I've worked with in the world of OSS because they're the ones who can connect the many disparate parts that make up an…

30/10/2018 No Comments

IBM acquires Red Hat for $34B

IBM TO ACQUIRE RED HAT, COMPLETELY CHANGING THE CLOUD LANDSCAPE AND BECOMING WORLD’S #1 HYBRID CLOUD PROVIDER. IBM and Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source cloud software, announced today that the companies have reached a definitive agreement under which IBM will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Red Hat for $190.00 per share in cash, representing a total enterprise…

29/10/2018 No Comments

Introducing our OSS expert registry, for making connections in the OSS industry

Here at Passionate About OSS, we're passionate about making OSS happen. We have an extensive network of contacts. We just naturally tend to find ourselves making connections between the many experts in our network. Connecting those who are hoping to find an OSS expert with an OSS expert hoping to be found. We've just introduced a new free-of-charge OSS expert registry to help people find OSS…

26/10/2018 No Comments

Facebook’s algorithmic feed for OSS

"This is the logic that led Facebook inexorably to the ‘algorithmic feed’, which is really just tech jargon for saying that instead of this random (i.e. 'time-based') sample of what’s been posted, the platform tries to work out which people you would most like to see things from, and what kinds of things you would most like to see. It ought to be able to work…

25/10/2018 No Comments

OSS collaboration rooms. Getting to the coal-face

A number of years ago I heard about an OSS product that introduced collaborative rooms for network operators to collectively solve challenging network health events. It was in line with some of my own thinking about the use of collaboration techniques to solve cross-domain or complex events. But the concept hasn't caught on in the way that I expected. I was curious why, so I asked…

24/10/2018 No Comments

Are we better off waiting for OSS technology to catch up?

Yesterday's post discussed Dave Duggal's concept of 20th century OSS being all about centralizing command and control to gain efficiency through vertical integration and mass standardization, whilst 21st century OSS are about decentralization – gaining efficiency through horizontal integration of partner ecosystems and mass customization. We talked about transitioning from a telco market driven by economies of scale (the 20th century benchmark) to a "market of…

23/10/2018 No Comments

Extending the OSS beyond a customer’s locus of control

"While the 20th century was all about centralizing command and control to gain efficiency through vertical integration and mass standardization, 21st century automation is about decentralization – gaining efficiency through horizontal integration of partner ecosystems and mass customization, as in the context-aware cloud where personalized experience across channels is dynamically orchestrated. The operational challenge of our time is to coordinate these moving parts into coherent and…

22/10/2018 No Comments

OSS feature parity. A functionality arms race

OSS Vendor 1. "I have 1 million features." (Dr Evil puts finger in mouth) OSS Vendor 2. "Yeah, well I have 1,000,001 features in my OSS." This is the arms-race that we see in OSS, just like almost any other tech product. I imagine that vendors get into this arms-race because they wish to differentiate. Better to differentiate on functionality than price. If there's a feature…

19/10/2018 No Comments

Pitching an OSS? Don’t call it OSS.

""If you asked me how to sell cybersecurity, I wouldn't call it cybersecurity." The raw truth of the statement hit me like a lightning bolt between the eyes. Cybersecurity might loosely describe what we do, and we tell people it's what we're selling, but it's not what people buy. Safety. Assurance. Peace of mind. Confidence. These are the kinds of things that people buy, concepts which…

18/10/2018 No Comments

The Chessboard Analogy. An OSS Solution in its Connections

Imagine for a moment that you're sitting in front of a pristine chess board, awaiting the opportunity to make your first move. All of the pieces have been exquisitely carved from stone, polished to a sheen. The rules of the game have been established for centuries, so you know exactly which piece is able to move in which sequences. Time to make the opening move. You've…

17/10/2018 No Comments

Would an EoL be beneficial for OSS?

In the world of networking, it's common for devices to go EOL (end-of-life). Capital spend and depreciation models are based around refresh cycles of around 5-7 years. Vendors reinforce this refresh cycle by designing obsolescence into maintenance, support and part supplies. Customers tend to simply submit to the risk of having no vendor support by buying the next generation replacements. But how often do you hear…

16/10/2018 No Comments

The future of work and its impact on OSS

Many years ago, I worked on a seriously big OSS transformation for one of the region's biggest telcos. Everything was big on the project, the investment, the resources, the documentation. Everything except the outcomes. There was so much inefficiency that I often spoke about making one day of progress for every ten on site. Meetings, bureaucracy, impossible approval cycles, customer re-organisations, over-analysis, etc all added up…

15/10/2018 No Comments

OSS – like a duck on a pond

Let's start with a basic question. "What does an OSS need to do?" The basic answer is, "make operations easier." The real answer(s) is so much more nuanced than that of course. The term easier can also encapsulate other words such as faster, more accurate, more repeatable, cheaper, etc. Designing, building, operating and maintaining a sizable network is extremely challenging, despite network operators around the world,…

12/10/2018 No Comments

OSS Road-itecture. Part-roadmap, part-architecture

A post from earlier this week discussed a less risky, dependency-reduced, stepping-stone transformation approach. It contrasted with the big-bang delivery model that's often proposed on OSS projects. Taking the same train of thought, have you noticed how often architects (including myself) come up with an end-state view of what an OSS, or IT, or networks will be? Have you also noticed that they often seek to…

11/10/2018 2 Comments

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