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From War and Peace to The Very Hungry Caterpillar: 5 Lessons in OSS Design for a New Generation

OSS tools have always been built by engineers for engineers. Engineers who love to show off their brilliant minds via layers of depth and complexity. But the new generation of users has no patience for this. Nor do their team-leaders. This article explores what we can learn from OSS/BSS user interfaces (UI) that are more analogous to children's books than thousand-page technical manuals. . Lesson 1:…

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17/07/2025 No Comments

Using Proactive Simulation to keep Black Swans out of your network

Telcos pour millions into incident and problem management every year. However, these budgets only kick in after damage is done. Black-swan failures (events or event combinations that have never been seen before) still bypass every safeguard to bring networks down on a regular basis. What if we could learn from industries like aviation and pharmaceutical research to prevent massive outages before they start? Why AIOps Alone…

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16/07/2025 No Comments

96% of Telco Reality Remains Hidden: Melting the Iceberg of Ignorance in 7 Steps

The Iceberg of Ignorance, (shown in the diagram below) is a widely revered model of imperfect communication between the coalface and the boardroom in large organisations. However, in telecommunications, it bears a striking resemblance to our own OSS/BSS information collection frameworks, revealing a design flaw that impacts situational awareness. And the only way to melt this iceberg is by combining OSS, BSS and multi-domain data analytics…

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08/07/2025 No Comments

OSS implementations are never truly unique: Until you look closer

There are two prevailing schools of thought when it comes to OSS transformation: Some believe that choosing an off-the-shelf OSS platform means the deployment will follow a predictable path. After all, the software is proven, the vendor provides reference architectures, they've implemented their solution numerous times before and the manuals promise standard processes Others are convinced that every OSS transformation is entirely bespoke and demands a…

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01/07/2025 No Comments

70% of OSS RFPs miss the Best Vendor. How to improve Your odds

Most carriers still rely on traditional RFP processes to select OSS/BSS vendors. These methods are seen as rigorous and comprehensive. However, they are slow, inflexible and often fail to surface the best-fit vendor. Despite consuming vast time and effort, statistically, they are only ~30% likely to find the best-fit vendor for your needs. We've continually refined our OSS procurement model over the years. It uses probabilistic…

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24/06/2025 No Comments

The Dragon Circle: Is Rehiring OSS/Telco Dragon Slayers a strategic move?

OSS dragon-slayers, the veterans of our industry who have built the OSS of today, are being quietly laid off and struggling to find re-employment for the first time in their careers. The industry has many reasons to explain why they are no longer employable. However, as telco infrastructure shifts into the hands of long-horizon investors, there might just be an interesting twist hiding in plain sight…

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18/06/2025 No Comments

The Chicken or the Egg – OSS/BSS or Market Change – Which to Reboot First?

Telcos have tolerated lengthy OSS/BSS rollouts as a necessary evil for years, but what if those same systems are the chains holding the telco world back. Which is the chicken and which is the egg? Is it OSS/BSS and/or the market that needs a radical reboot? Which must be rebooted first? OSS and BSS are deeply linked with telco business models. As you'll see from the…

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17/06/2025 No Comments

OSS isn’t just a Battle. It’s a Quest. And every Quest needs more than Just Dragon Slayers

You’ve already got your dragon slayers. Your team is filled with seasoned OSS professionals who’ve faced complex, high-stakes problems and lived to tell the tale. They’re reliable, sharp, and tested. But if you’re the King / Queen, the one responsible for building the team, then you need more than just experience. You need adaptability. Perspective. The ability to see what even your veteran dragon-slayers don't or…

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10/06/2025 No Comments

From Indispensable to Overlooked and Back: Making OSS Dragon Slayers Valuable Again

Many OSS veterans, the people who built the OSS of today, are no longer being offered full-time roles. Clients often assume they have become obsolete or are simply too expensive. However, these same experts are still solving the toughest OSS problems, drawing on decades of hard-earned experience. They are just not doing it from inside your org chart. The real surprise? These highly experienced OSS dragon…

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06/06/2025 No Comments

The Buyer-Seller Chasm Series Summary

This article provides a summary of our Buyer-Seller Chasm series of articles, where we start with the guiding principle that: The buyers (carriers) desperately need better tools to transform their operations. The sellers (vendors) already have better tools, which they desperately want to sell. The problem worth solving lies in the extraordinary amount of time, resources and cost it usually takes to bring buyers and sellers…

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06/06/2025 No Comments

What if the Real Legacy in OSS isn’t Code – But Culture?

Everyone’s chasing a better OSS, which for most means planning the next OSS platform migration. Yet we rarely ask the key questions that guarantees long-term success: “When was the last time someone in your team really challenged the way things are done?” “Does everyone on your team feel empowered / safe to pose radical new ideas (not just incremental suggestions)?” "Are we designing for day 1…

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03/06/2025 2 Comments

Digital Threads are Re-inventing the Modern TowerCo: OSS, Drones, 3D Models and GTM Innovation

Tower sites / assets have long been seen as fixed infrastructure. Passive, static, silent. But a new wave of tools and novel go-to-market (GTM) models are rewriting the rulebook. The smartest TowerCos no longer manage their tower assets from CAD drawings, spreadsheets and manpower alone. They're turning each site into an edge utility hub. Dynamic, intelligent and interactive, with full commercial visibility and immersive situational awareness.…

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28/05/2025 No Comments

Sam Altman Warns of One Major Constraint on Intelligence. And OSS are Closely Linked

Most people think AI innovation depends on breakthroughs in models and training algorithms. But those are just the surface. Underneath, OSS and BSS aren't the constraint, but their coordination could become the ultimate facilitator of intelligence. Sam Altman's testimony at the Senate Committee Hearings on 8 May 2025 only underscores that: "I think it's hard to overstate how important energy is to the future here... Eventually…

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27/05/2025 No Comments

Beyond the Prompt: Training OSS Masters When AI Takes over the Basics

“In vain do we build the city if we do not first build the man.” Edwin Markham AI will surely run the OSS cities of the future. AI may even build the OSS cities of the future. What can we do now to build the OSS masters of the future? . We’re already witnessing the dawn of an AI-infused era in OSS. From fault-fix to network…

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13/05/2025 No Comments

Jeff Bezos Designs for What Won’t Change: 7 Enduring Truths for OSS / BSS and Telco

Forget what’s trending in telecom. The future of telecom isn’t about what changes. It’s about what never will. It’s not about desperately trying to keep up with all the fads or buzzwords. It’s about delivering the things your customers will never stop expecting. Why Jeff Bezos Designs Platforms for Stability, Not Speed Jeff Bezos famously said at AWS that instead of obsessing over what will change…

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09/05/2025 No Comments

Avoiding the Dead Zone: The OSS Transformation Accelerator that is Almost Always Overlooked

Most OSS programs stall before they even start, waiting on the longest pole in the tent - production infrastructure - to become available for the first OSS software builds. This invariably involves waiting on solution designs, procurement, approvals, integrations and more. But what if there were a faster way? There's one step that we use on almost all transformations, one that’s too often overlooked, yet gives…

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06/05/2025 No Comments

Subtracting the Suck: An OSS Product Roadmap

Making your OSS easy to use isn't about adding more "easyness" - it's about subtracting what sucks. "To make your stuff "easier to use" you don't make it "easier." You look at all the things that make it hard, then remove them one by one. Easy isn't something you add. It's what's left over after everything that sucks is removed." Alex Hormozi. "Easy to use" is…

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22/04/2025 No Comments

Field Notes from a Network Exorcist: How to Curse-Proof Your Network

The call came in at 5:43am. “The routers are acting up again down at 1313 Packetloss Lane” the night supervisor whispered, as if afraid the devices might hear her. “It’s... flickering. The network’s hanging in there, but people keep reporting ghost pings and strange device behaviour.” This is the bane of my existence - another cursed asset. I grabbed the essentials: laptop, EM Packet Field Meter…

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03/04/2025 No Comments

Why Telcos desperately need an 8th Layer in the OSI Model

Telco appears to be an increasingly tough industry. Demand for connectivity continues to soar, yet profitability and differentiation are becoming ever more difficult to achieve. The traditional telco playbook - built on infrastructure, scale, and one-size-fits-all services - is collapsing under the weight of commoditisation and digital disruption. Telco services have never been more essential, but telco business models have never been more broken. What if…

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01/04/2025 No Comments