Passionate About OSS Blog | Passionate About OSS and BSS

Blown away by one innovation – a follow-up concept

Last Friday's blog discussed how I’ve just been blown away by the most elegant OSS innovation I’ve seen in decades. You can read more detail via the link, but the three major factors in this simple, elegant solution to data quality problems (probably OSS' biggest kryptonite) are: Being able to make connections that break standard object hierarchy rules; but Having the ability to mark that standard…

26/03/2018 No Comments

I’ve just been blown away by the most elegant OSS innovation I’ve seen in decades

Looking back, I now consider myself extremely lucky to have worked with an amazing product on the first OSS project I worked on (all the way back in 2000). And I say amazing because the underlying data models and core product architecture are still better than any other I've worked with in the two decades since. The core is the most elegant, simple and powerful I've…

23/03/2018 1 Comment

Is your data AI-ready (part 2)

Further to yesterday's post that posed the question about whether your data was AI ready for virtualised network assurance use cases, I thought I'd raise a few more notes. The two reasons posed were: Our data sets haven't had time to collect much elastic / dynamic network data yet Our data is riddled with human-generated data that is error-prone On the latter case in particular, I…

22/03/2018 No Comments

Are your existing data sets actually suited to seeding an AI engine?

"In the virtualization domain, the old root cause technology is becoming obsolete because resources and workloads move around dynamically – we no longer have fixed network and compute resources. Existing service assurance systems in the telecommunication network were designed to manage a fixed set of resources and these assurance systems fall short in monitoring dynamic virtualized networks. Code was written using a rule based approach on…

21/03/2018 No Comments

Digital Transformation World, the new name for TM Forum Live!

It's only recently dawned on me that TM Forum Live! has a new website and a new name. It's now called Digital Transformation World. Time has flown. It's already less than two months until the event (14-16 May 2018 in Nice, France). Catalyst day is on the 17th. Registrations can already be made... at this link: https://dtw.tmforum.org/registration/. Check out the list of speakers. There are some…

20/03/2018 No Comments

Drinking from the OSS firehose

"Most people know what they want, but don’t know how to get it. When you don’t know the next step, you procrastinate or feel lost. But a little research can turn a vague desire into specific actions. For example: When musicians say, “I need a booking agent”, I ask, “Which one? What’s their name?” You can’t act on a vague desire. But with an hour of…

20/03/2018 No Comments

After the boys of OSS have gone

Something has always bothered me about the medical profession. Whenever you visit a GP (General Practitioner), unless you need to come back for test results or ongoing treatment, the doctor never finds out if their diagnoses / prescriptions have been effective. In my experience at least, they don't call to see whether there were any complications, allergic reactions to treatments, improvement in condition, etc and only…

19/03/2018 No Comments

Gartner Magic Quadrant for OSS Feb 2018

The latest Magic Quadrant for Operations Support Systems is as follows: Source: Gartner (February 2018)

18/03/2018 No Comments

Fortumo partners with Apigate in Cambodia

Fortumo partners with Apigate to launch content services in Cambodia. Fortumo and Apigate, a subsidiary of Axiata Digital, announced their latest collaboration to launch content services in Cambodia via Smart Axiata’s Direct Carrier Billing API. This collaboration will enable Smart’s subscribers to make payments in app stores for digital content and games by conveniently charging the payments to their mobile phone bill. Almost half of Cambodians…

17/03/2018 No Comments

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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.

01/03/2018 No Comments

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