It's interesting how we tend to go in cycles. Back in the early days of OSS, the network operators tended to build their OSS from the ground up. Then we went through a phase of using Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) OSS software developed by third-party vendors. We now seem to be cycling back towards in-house development, but with collaboration that includes vendors and external assistance through open-source…
Read More »There's a concept in sales called "risk reversal" that takes all of the customers' likely issues with a product and provides answers to alleviate customer concerns. I believe we can apply the same concept to OSS, not just to sell them, but to design them. To borrow from a risk register page here on PAOSS, the major categories of risk that appear on almost all OSS projects…
Read More »Last week we discussed a sell-side co-op business model. Today we'll look at buy-side co-op models. In other industries, we hear of buying groups getting great deals through aggregated buying volumes. This is a little harder to achieve with products that are as uniquely customised as OSS. It's possible that OSS buy-side aggregation could occur for operators that are similar in nature but don't compete (eg…
Read More »Many years ago, I made a data migration blunder that slowed a production OSS down to a crawl. Actually, less than a crawl. It almost became unusable. I was tasked with creating a production database of a carrier's entire network inventory, including data migration for a bunch of Nortel Passport ATM switches (yes, it was that long ago). There were around 70 of these devices in…
Read More »"One business customer, for example, may require ultra-reliable services, whereas other business customers may need ultra-high-bandwidth communication or extremely low latency. The 5G network needs to be designed to be able to offer a different mix of capabilities to meet all these diverse requirements at the same time. From a functional point of view, the most logical approach is to build a set of dedicated networks…
Read More »Pentagon Creates ‘Do Not Buy’ List of Russian, Chinese Software. The Pentagon is working on a software “do not buy” list to block vendors who use software code originating from Russia and China, a top Defense Department acquisitions official said on Friday. Apparently The The Pentagon started compiling the list about six months ago. Suspicious companies are put on a list that is circulated to the…
Read More »"A co-operative is a member-owned business structure with at least five members, all of whom have equal voting rights regardless of their level of involvement or investment. All members are expected to help run the cooperative." Small Business WA. The co-op business model has fascinated me since doing some tech projects in the dairy industry in the deep distant past. The dairy co-ops empower collaboration of…
Read More »A recent blog from Seth Godin brought back some memories from a past project. "Two ways to solve a problem and provide a service. With drama. Make sure the customer knows just how hard you’re working, what extent you’re going to in order to serve. Make a big deal out of the special order, the additional cost, the sweat and the tears. Without drama. Make it…
Read More »A recent post discussed the challenge of getting a timeslice of operations people to help build the OSS. That post surmised, "as the old saying goes, you get back what you put in. In the case of OSS I’ve seen it time and again that operations need to contribute significantly to the implementation to ensure they get a solution that fits their needs." I have a…
Read More »The following is the result of a survey question posed by TM Forum: I'm not sure how the numbers tally, but conceptually the graph above paints an interesting perspective of why orchestration is important. The graph indicates the why. But in this case, for me, the why is the by-product of the how. The main attraction of orchestration models is in how we can achieve modularity.…
Read More »Many years ago, I was lucky enough to lead a team responsible for designing a complex inside and outside plant network in a massive oil and gas precinct. It had over 120 buildings and more than 30 networked systems. We were tasked with using CAD (Computer Aided Design) and Office tools to design the comms and security solution for the precinct. And when I say security,…
Read More »In 1998 Berkshire Hathaway acquired a reinsurance company called General Re. "The only significant staff change that followed the merger was the elimination of General Re's investment unit. Some 150 people had been in charge of deciding where to invest the company's funds; they were replaced with just one individual - Warren Buffett." Robert G. Hagstrom in, "The Warren Buffett Way." Buffett was able to replace…
Read More »I'd like to get your opinion on this question - are OSS business tools or technical tools? We can say that BSS are as the name implies - business support systems. We can say that NMS / EMS / NEMS are network management tools - technical tools. The OSS layer fits between those two layers . It's where the business and technology worlds combine (collide??). If…
Read More »How many OSS business cases have you seen that are built around cost reduction? Most of them?? Now let me ask the same question, but with one extra word included and see whether it completely inverts your answer. How many OSS business cases have you seen that are built on capital cost reduction? None of them?? Almost every "cost-out" business case is built on operational cost…
Read More »Yesterday's post talked about using customer contacts as a real-time proxy metric for friction in the business, which could also be a directional indicator for customer experience. That got me wondering what other proxy metrics might be used by to provide predictive indicators of what's happening in your network, OSS and/or BSS. Apparently, "Colt aims to enhance its service assurance capabilities by taking non-traditional data (signal…
Read More »NPS, or Net Promoter Score, has become commonly used in the telecoms industry in recent years. In effect, it is a metric that measures friction in the business. If NPS is high, the business runs more smoothly. Customers are happy with the service and want to buy more of it. They're happy with the service so they don't need to contact the business. If NPS is…
Read More »Irby Announces Partnership with Biarri Networks. Irby, a subsidiary of Sonepar, announced an innovative partnership with Biarri Networks, global provider of OSP fiber optic network design software and services. Irby named Biarri Networks as its fiber optic design and engineering partner following an extensive selection process, with the key criteria being cultural fit, contribution to the industry, and a proven history of innovation in the telecom…
Read More »OSS are there to do just that - support operations. So as OSS implementers we have to do just that too. But as the old saying goes, you get back what you put in. In the case of OSS I've seen it time and again that operations need to contribute significantly to the implementation to ensure they get a solution that fits their needs. Just one…
Read More »Weirdest. Acquisition. Ever. Broadcom buys CA Technologies. Broadcom to Acquire CA Technologies for $18.9 Billion in Cash. Broadcom Inc., a semiconductor device supplier to the wired, wireless, enterprise storage, and industrial end markets, and CA Technologies, [a] provider of information technology (IT) management software and solutions, announced that the companies have entered into a definitive agreement under which Broadcom has agreed to acquire CA to build…
Read More »OSS tend to be very good at presenting a current moment in time - the current configuration of the network, the health of the network, the activities underway. Some (but not all) tend to struggle to cope with other moments in time - past and future. Most have tools that project into the future for the purpose of capacity planning, such as link saturation estimation (based…
Read More »Yesterday's post discussed the merits of front-loading effort on knowledge transfer of new starters and automated testing, whilst acknowledging the challenges that often prevent that from happening. Today we look at the front-loading benefits of building OSS / network auto-discovery tools. We all know that OSS are only as good as the data we seed them with. As the old saying goes, garbage in, garbage out.…
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