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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

Etisalat chooses Nokia’s Nuage Networks SD-WAN

Etisalat chooses Nokia's Nuage Networks SD-WAN solution as part of its 'Sahaab Program' to cloudify network services. Nokia announced that Etisalat has chosen the Nuage Networks Virtualized Network Services (VNS) SD-WAN solution as a key element in its cloud transformation program. Nuage Networks VNS enables Etisalat to provide automated, dynamic, programmable and more efficient services to its enterprise customers. It will enable self-service ordering and configuration…

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24/02/2018 No Comments

Compiling “The Zen of OSS” perhaps?

A recent presentation just reminded me of "The Zen of Python." It's a collection of 20 (19?) software principles, particularly as they relate to the Python programming language. Since OSS is software-defined, (almost) all of the principles (not sure about the "Dutch" one) relate to OSS in a programming sense, but perhaps in a broader sense as well. I'd like to share two pairings: Errors should…

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23/02/2018 No Comments

This one OSS factor can give a sustainable advantage

The business case justifications of OSS tend to fall into four categories: Revenue increase - the operationalisation and monetisation of an operator's assets Cost reduction - improving the operational efficiency of the operator Insight generation - by leveraging the valuable data that an OSS collects Brand value - this is a catch-all for many different ways an OSS can contribute to (or detract from) an operator's…

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22/02/2018 No Comments

Dan Pink’s 6 critical OSS senses

I recently wrote an article that spoke about the obsolescence of jobs in OSS, particularly as a result of Artificial Intelligence. But an article by someone much more knowledgeable about AI than me, Rodney Brooks, had this to say, "We are surrounded by hysteria about the future of artificial intelligence and robotics — hysteria about how powerful they will become, how quickly, and what they will…

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21/02/2018 No Comments

Finding the most important problems to solve

The problem with OSS is that there are too many problems. We don't have to look too hard to find a problem that needs solving. An inter-related issue is that we're (almost always) constrained by resources and aren't able to solve every problem we find. I have a theory - As much as you are skilled at solving OSS problems, it's actually your skill at deciding…

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20/02/2018 No Comments

NTT Com India-Netmagic partners with Nuage Networks

NTT Com India-Netmagic partners with Nuage Networks to provide Managed SD-WAN Service. NTT Com India-Netmagic announced that the company has partnered with Nuage Networks, the Nokia venture focused on Software Defined Networks (SDN), to enhance its Network as a Service (NaaS) portfolio based on its innovative Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) solution. This enables enterprises to automatically route and optimise network traffic and gain visibility of…

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20/02/2018 No Comments

OSS and Network of the Future architectures workshop in Melbourne this week

OSS and Network of the Future architectures workshop in Melbourne this week. Click on the link above to register online. TM Forum's description of the event is as follows: As part of the TM Forum Open Digital Architecture program, we are starting work on a standardized definition of Operational Domain Managers (ODM) capabilities. Telstra will be hosting an open TM Forum Local workshop on ODM to…

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19/02/2018 No Comments

Bringing Eminem’s blank canvas to OSS

"When you start out in your career, you have a blank canvas, so you can paint anywhere that you want because the shit ain't been painted on yet. And then your second album comes out, and you paint a little more and you paint a little more. By the time you get to your seventh and eighth album you've already painted all over it. There's nowhere…

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19/02/2018 No Comments

Nokia and Tele2 sign strategic IoT partnership

Nokia and Tele2 sign strategic partnership to provide global IoT services. Nokia and Tele2 IoT have signed a five-year agreement to enable the delivery of IoT services to Tele2 enterprise customers based on Nokia's worldwide IoT network grid (WING). Nokia WING will allow Tele2 IoT to rapidly and cost-effectively provide complete IoT services to its enterprise customers in fields including transport, healthcare, smart city and utilities…

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19/02/2018 No Comments

50 exercises to ignite your OSS innovation sessions

Every project starts with an idea... an idea that someone is excited enough to sponsor. But where are your ideas being generated from? How do they get cultivated and given time to grow? How do they get pitched? and How do they get heard? How are sponsors persuaded? How do they then get implemented? How do we amplify this cycle of innovation and implementation? I'm fascinated by…

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16/02/2018 No Comments

How the investment strategy of a $106 billion VC fund changed my OSS thinking

What is a service provider's greatest asset? Now I'm biased when considering the title question, but I believe OSS are the puppet-master of every modern service provider. They're the systems that pull all of the strings of the organisation. They generate the revenue by operationalising and assuring the networks as well as the services they carry. They coordinate the workforce. They form the real-time sensor networks…

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15/02/2018 No Comments

The chains of integration are too light until…

"Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken." Warren Buffett (although he attributed it to an unknown author, perhaps originating with Samuel Johnson). What if I were to replace the word "habit" in the quote above with "OSS integration" or "OSS customisation" or "feature releases?" The elegant quote reflects this image: The chains of feature releases are…

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14/02/2018 No Comments

Updated OSS products / vendors list

Over the last few days we've made some updates to our OSS products / vendors list to reflect recent acquisitions, mergers, etc. Please let us know if there are any others we should be adding to the list.

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13/02/2018 No Comments

Posing a Network Data Synchronisation Protocol (NDSP) concept

Data quality is one of the biggest challenges we face in OSS. A product could be technically perfect, but if the data being pumped into it is poor, then the user experience of the product will be awful - the OSS becomes unusable, and that in itself generates a data quality death spiral. This becomes even more important for the autonomous, self-healing, programmable, cooperative networks being…

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13/02/2018 No Comments

I’m predicting the demise of the OSS horse

"What will telcos do about the 30% of workers AI is going to displace?" Dawn Bushaus That question, which is the headline of Dawn's article on TM Forum's Inform platform, struck me as being quite profound. As an aside, I'm not interested in the number - the 30% - because I concur with Tom Goodwin's sentiments on LinkedIn, "There is a lot of nonsense about AI. Next…

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12/02/2018 2 Comments

Are your various device inventory repositories in synch?

Does your organisation have a number of different device inventory repositories? Hint: You might even be surprised by how many you have. Examples include: Physical network inventory Logical network inventory DNS records CMDB (Config Management DB) IPAM (IP Address Management) EMS (Element Management Systems) SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) Desktop / server management not to mention the management information base on the devices themselves (the…

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09/02/2018 No Comments

The concept of DevOps is missing one really important thing

There's a concept that's building a buzz across all digital industries - you may've heard of it - it's a little thing called DevOps. Someone (most probably a tester) decided to extend it and now you might even hear the #DevTestOps moniker being mentioned. In the ultimate of undeserved acknowledgements, I even get a reference on Wikipedia's DevOps page. It references this DevOps life-cycle diagram from…

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08/02/2018 No Comments

Speedcast secures AU$184m contract with NBN Co

Speedcast Secures Contract Valued at Up to AU$184 Million with NBN Co Australia. Speedcast International Limited announced it has secured a 10-year contract with Australian government-owned infrastructure provider NBN Co to deliver enterprise-grade satellite services. Speedcast’s wholly-owned subsidiary and dedicated entity, Speedcast Managed Services, will partner with NBN Co to design, build and manage NBN Co’s enterprise satellite services. The value of the base network build…

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07/02/2018 No Comments