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PCCW Global and Colt demonstrate payment settlements using blockchain

PCCW Global and Colt demonstrate speedy payment settlements using blockchain technology. PCCW Global, the international operating division of HKT, Hong Kong’s premier telecommunications service provider, and Colt Technology Services have collaborated with Clear, a blockchain start-up company, to demonstrate that inter-carrier settlement times can be reduced from hours to minutes by blockchain technology. The objective of this Proof of Concept (PoC) was to ascertain if the…

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15/03/2018 No Comments

Overcoming the multi-faceted OSS expertise conundrum

How many times have you heard a colleague say they wish they could clone themselves (or one of their trusted colleagues)? Alternatively, to say they'd like to do a copy *.* of a colleague's brain? I'm feeling that way more now than at any time in the past, not of any one person in particular, but on whole fields of expertise. Data science, network virtualisation, cloud…

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15/03/2018 No Comments

Trickle-down impact planning

We introduced the concept of The Trickle-down Effect last year, an effect that sees the most minor changes trickling down through an OSS stack, with much bigger consequences than expected. "The trickle-down effect can be insidious, turning a nice open COTS solution into a beast that needs constant attention to cope with the most minor of operational changes. The more customisations made, the more gnarly the…

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14/03/2018 No Comments

The answer is soooo obvious…. or is it?

There's a crowded room of OSS experts, a room filled with serious intellectual horsepower. You might be a virtu-OSS-o, but you surely know that there's still so much to be learnt from those around you. You have the chance to unlock the experiences and insights of your esteemed colleagues. But how? The answer might seem to be obvious. You do so by asking questions. Lots of…

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13/03/2018 No Comments

One sentence to make most OSS experts cringe

Let me warn you. The following sentence is going to make many OSS experts cringe, maybe even feel slightly disgusted, but take the time to read the remainder of the post and ponder how it fits within your specific OSS context/s. "Our OSS need to help people spend money!" Notice the word is "help" and not "coerce?" This is not a post about turning our OSS…

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12/03/2018 2 Comments

Those who rule perfect data…

A Passionate About OSS article last month spoke of how the investment strategy of a $106 billion VC fund has changed my thinking on our OSS' most valuable asset. Masayoshi Son is quoted in that article as follows: "Those who rule data will rule the entire world. That’s what people of the future will say." But one question keeps coming back to me... if you're ruling…

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09/03/2018 No Comments

Tele2 Netherlands deploys Nokia Cognitive Analytics

Tele2 Netherlands deploys Nokia Cognitive Analytics real-time software to consistently deliver a superior customer experience. Nokia Traffica is helping Tele2 Netherlands deliver a superior real-time subscriber experience on its mobile network by more quickly and accurately identifying and resolving service issues and improving network quality. Nokia Traffica software is part of the Nokia Cognitive Analytics portfolio. It is a real-time network analytics solution for monitoring and…

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07/03/2018 No Comments

The pruning saw technique for OSS fall-out management

Many different user journeys flow through our OSS every day. These include external / customer journeys, internal / operator journeys and possibly even machines-to-machine or system journeys. Unfortunately, not all of these journeys are correctly completed through to resolution. The incomplete or unsatisfactory journeys could include inter-system fall-outs, customer complaints, service quality issues, and many more. If we categorise and graph these unsuccessful journeys, we will…

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07/03/2018 No Comments

How smart contracts might reduce risk and enhance trust on OSS projects

Last Friday, we spoke about all wanting to develop trusted OSS supplier / customer relationships but rarely finding them and a contrarian factor for why trust is so hard to achieve in OSS - complexity. Trust is the glue that allows OSS projects to happen. Not only that, it becomes a catch-22 with complexity. If OSS partners don't trust each other, requirements, contracts, etc get more…

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06/03/2018 No Comments

An OSS niche market opportunity?

"The survey found that 82 percent of service providers conduct less than half of customer transactions digitally, despite the fact that nearly 80 percent of respondents said they are moving forward with business-wide digital transformation programs of varying size and scale. This underscores a large perception gap in understanding, completing and benefiting from digitalization programs. The study revealed that more than one-third of service providers have…

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05/03/2018 No Comments

We all want to develop trusted OSS partnerships, so why does so much scepticism exist?

Every OSS supplier wants to achieve "trusted" status with their customers. Each supplier wants to be the source trusted to provide the best vision of the future for each customer. Similarly, each OSS customer wants a supplier they can trust and seek guidance from. I'm an independent consultant, so I have been lucky enough to represent many organisations on both sides of that equation. And in…

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02/03/2018 No Comments

Interaction points with fast/slow processes

Further to yesterday's post on fast / slow processes and factory platforms, a concept presented by Sylvain Denis of Orange in Melbourne last week, here's a diagram from Sylvain's presentation pack : The yellow blocks represent the fast (automated) processes. The orange blocks represent the slow processes. The next slide showed the human interaction points (blue boxes) into this API / factory stack.

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01/03/2018 No Comments

Globe Telecom signs multi-year deal with Amdocs

Globe Telecom Signs Multi-Year Intelligent Operations Deal with Amdocs for Continuous Enhancement of Services and Operations. Amdocs announced that it  has signed a multi-year services contract with Globe Telecom, one of the Philippines’ largest telecommunications providers, for continuous enhancement of Globe Telecom’s operations. According to the agreement, Amdocs Intelligent Operations will assist Globe in managing third-party systems and cloud management solutions. This includes modernizing and running…

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01/03/2018 No Comments

Nokia selected by Vodafone for Mission to the Moon project

Nokia is selected by Vodafone to be its technology partner for Mission to the Moon project. The Moon will get 4G coverage next year, 50 years after the first NASA astronauts walked on its surface. Vodafone plans to create the first 4G network on the Moon to support a mission by PTScientists in 2019 and has appointed Nokia as its technology partner. Berlin-based company, PTScientists is…

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01/03/2018 No Comments

Vodafone selects NEC/Netcracker for Domain Orchestration

Vodafone Will Leverage NEC/Netcracker's Hybrid Operations Management to Drive Groupwide Cloud Transformation. NEC Corporation and Netcracker Technology announced that Vodafone Group has selected NEC/Netcracker's Hybrid Operations Management (HOM) solution to support its transition into a telecommunications cloud provider. The virtualization initiative will incorporate the use of cloud-native, SDN and NFV technologies to evolve operational and business systems and processes. NEC/Netcracker's Hybrid Operations Management will support this…

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28/02/2018 No Comments

Aria Networks joins ETSI Network AI Initiative

AI (Artificial Intelligence) and networking pioneer Aria Networks has joined the ETSI group formed to lead the industry in mapping the future of AI and Networking. The ETSI Experiential Networked Intelligence (ENI) Industry Specification Group (ISG) was set up in February 2017, to define a new architecture for network management leveraging Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to improve automation. ETSI ENI already has the backing of…

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28/02/2018 No Comments

Fast / Slow OSS processes

Yesterday's post discussed using smart contracts and Network as a Service (NaaS) to give a network the properties that will allow it to self-heal. It mentioned a couple of key challenges, one being that there will always be physical activities such as cable cuts fixes, faulty equipment replacement, physical equipment expansion / contraction / lifecycle-management. In a TM Forum presentation last week, Sylvain Denis of Orange…

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28/02/2018 No Comments

Amdocs and Amazon Web Services announce strategic program

Amdocs and Amazon Web Services Announce Strategic Program. Amdocs announced a strategic collaboration agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to accelerate Communications Service Providers’ (CSPs) transition to the cloud to drive rapid innovation and operational efficiencies. A recent, comprehensive industry survey completed by Analysys Mason found that by 2022 more than 90 percent of CSP systems will run on the cloud, with more than 60 percent…

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28/02/2018 No Comments

The challenges in transforming network assurance to network healing

A couple of interesting concepts have the ability to fundamentally change the way networks and services are maintained. If they can be harnessed, we could replace the term "network assurance" with "network healing." The first concept is SON, which has been formulated specifically with mobile radio networks in mind, but has the potential to extend into all network types. "A Self-Organizing Network (SON) is an automation…

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27/02/2018 No Comments

Potential OSS failures aren’t always technical

I recently attended an event where a brainstorming question was posed about how a particular next-gen OSS concept might fail. Interesting exercise! There were a lot of super-clever technical people in the room. The brainstorming of ideas was a fascinating one. We dived deeply into the experiences of many of the technical people in the room and all the potential technical reasons for failure. But I…

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26/02/2018 No Comments

NEC and Netcracker advance commercial NaaS deployment at TELUS

Netcracker-Enabled Network Transformation Powers TELUS to Deliver Personalized, Software-Defined Networking Services Faster. NEC Corporation and Netcracker Technology announced that NEC/Netcracker's Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) Business and Operational Support solution has gone into production at TELUS, a Canadian telecommunications company. TELUS NaaS enables businesses to virtually build, manage and cloud-optimize their networks quickly, easily and cost-effectively through a flexible self-serve platform. New secure networking services, such as SD-WAN, can…

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24/02/2018 No Comments