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Smart (Philippines) deploys Amdocs

Smart Embraces Intelligence to Deliver a New Level of Service Personalization to Millions of Filipinos. Amdocs announced that Smart Communications Inc. (Smart) has deployed an Amdocs solution enabling personalized and contextualized customer engagement. Smart is one of the largest wireless service providers in the Philippines and has deployed the Amdocs solution to support its entire subscriber base of nearly 60 million prepaid and postpaid subscribers. The…

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12/10/2017 No Comments

The OSS Think Big juxtaposition

I recently saw the advertisement below: I've clipped only the last 10 seconds because that was the part that struck me. The ad is for BHP*, one of the world's largest miners. The mining industry thinks in long-term projects because it takes many years to deliver results - for exploration, planning, approvals, for the infrastructure to be built and operationalised, etc. Mining is "only" the process…

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12/10/2017 No Comments

Getting past the first layer on the OSS onion

"When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions." Steve Jobs. The quote above pretty well describes my experience with…

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11/10/2017 No Comments

Think war!

"Think war. Extreme times call for extreme measures. When your ideas are facing life or death, that's an extreme time. Like a soldier in battle, you can't even afford to suffer a single hit - so make sure you hit first. Pull out all stops. Remember, when your idea's life is on the line, the last thing you want is a fair fight. Use every available…

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09/10/2017 No Comments

Nuage Networks wins project in China

Nuage Networks wins first SDN-based, large enterprise project in China. Nuage Networks, the Nokia venture focused on software-defined networking (SDN) solutions, today announced a significant addition to its roster of global financial customers with its first SDN-based, large enterprise project win in China with China Pacific Insurance Company (CPIC), the country's second-largest property insurance company. The private cloud SDN project,won via Nokia Shanghai Bell, will use…

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07/10/2017 No Comments

Openet’s policy solution wins with Iridium

Openet’s policy solution has now been implemented by three satellite operators. Openet announced that Iridium Communications has implemented its Policy Manager solution. The solution, Openet’s third deployment with a satellite operator, will allow Iridium to drive revenue by imposing real-time controls on data consumption and time usage across its 66 low-Earth orbiting (LEO) cross-linked satellites. With the world’s largest commercial satellite constellation, Iridium provides reliable voice…

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05/10/2017 No Comments

Nokia zero CAPEX analytics

Nokia unlocks value from telco data through new Analytics Services, expanded application of augmented intelligence. Nokia expands its Analytics Services offering to unlock value from telco data, enabling improved network issue resolution and fewer dropped calls for operators. Powered by the Nokia AVA cognitive services platform, the expanding Analytics Services offering takes advantage of billions of crowd-sourced measurements, enriched through machine learning to provide forensic analysis…

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05/10/2017 No Comments

One of the biggest insights we had…

"One of the biggest insights we had was that we decided not to try to manage your music library on the iPod, but to manage it in iTunes. Other companies tried to do everything on the device itself and made it so complicated that it was useless." Steve Jobs. How does this insight apply to OSS? Can this "off device" perspective help us in designing better…

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05/10/2017 No Comments

The augmented analytics journey

"Smart Data Discovery goes beyond data monitoring to help business users discover subtle and important factors and identify issues and patterns within the data so the organization can identify challenges and capitalize on opportunities. These tools allow business users to leverage sophisticated analytical techniques without the assistance of technical professionals or analysts. Users can perform advanced analytics in an easy-to-use, drag and drop interface without knowledge of…

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04/10/2017 No Comments

My least successful project

Many years ago I worked on a three-way project with 1) a customer, 2) a well-known equipment vendor and 3) a service provider (my client). Time-frames were particularly tight, not so much because of the technical challenge, but because of the bureaucratic processes of the customer and the service provider. The project was worth well in excess of $100M, so it was a decent-sized project as…

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03/10/2017 No Comments

You have to love being incompetent

"You have to love being incompetent in order to be competent." James Altucher. Not sure that anyone loves feeling incompetent, but James' quote is particularly relevant in the world of OSS. There are always so many changes underway that you're constantly taken out of your comfort zone. But the question becomes how do you overcome those phases / areas of incompetence? Earlier in my career, I…

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02/10/2017 No Comments

Nokia contributes on SD Fixed Access Networks

Nokia first to contribute open source software to accelerate adoption of software-defined fixed access networks. Nokia is playing a leading role in the Broadband Forum's effort to spark fixed access network innovation by spearheading the new Broadband Access Abstraction (BAA) project. The initiative, led by Nokia, seeks to drive the adoption of software-defined access networks through the contribution of open source software, uniting vendors and operators…

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01/10/2017 No Comments

Warring tribes and the five paper ball technique

The following extract from Ken Segall’s book, "Insanely Simple," provides a great story on persuasion: "At one agency meeting with Steve Jobs, we were reviewing the content of a proposed iMac commercial when a debate arose about how much we should say in the commercial. The creative team was arguing that it would work best if the entire spot was devoted to describing the one key…

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28/09/2017 No Comments

Deciding whether to PoC or to doc

As recently discussed with two friends and colleagues, Raman and Darko, Proofs of Concept (PoC) or Minimum Viable Product (MVP) implementations can be a double-edged sword. By building something without fully knowing the end-game, you are potentially building tech-debt that may be very difficult to work around without massive (or complete) overhaul of what you've built. The alternative is to go through a process of discovery…

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27/09/2017 No Comments

This is the best OSS book I’ve ever read

This post is about the most inspiring OSS book I've ever read, and yet it doesn't contain a single word that is directly about OSS (so clearly I'm not spruiking my own OSS-centric book here ;) ). It's a book that outlines the resolutions to so many of the challenges being faced by traditional communications service providers (CSPs) as well as the challenges faced by their…

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26/09/2017 No Comments

One unasked last question for OSS business cases

OSS business case evaluators routinely ask many questions that relate to key metrics like return on investment, capital to be outlaid, expected returns, return on investment, and more of the same circular financial questions. :) They do also ask a few technical questions to decide risk - of doing the project or not doing the project. Timeframes and resources come into play, but again tend to…

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25/09/2017 No Comments

OSS brand building with the simple stick

"Today's consumers want to get the best prices, but offering your brand at a discount can undermine profits and threaten viability. Smart brands utilize strategies to create and sustain a meaningful difference that helps consumers justify spending more." Nigel Hollis, in his PoV on branding. I once read a statistic that at one point Apple owned 6.5% of the total handset market, but accounted for 75%…

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22/09/2017 No Comments

Midco expands with Netcracker

Midco Expands Billing Relationship With Netcracker to Leverage Advanced B2B Billing Capabilities. Netcracker Technology announced that Midcontinent Communications (Midco) has expanded and extended its billing relationship to enable more complex billing scenarios for its business customers. Midco will leverage Netcracker's next-generation Revenue Management solution to enhance its ability to offer dynamic pricing options while reducing operational costs. Midco delivers internet, cable, fixed-line and home automated services…

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21/09/2017 No Comments

The mafia… Pressure? What pressure?

OSS delivery teams can be quite tense environments to work within can't they? Deadlines, urgency, being in the customer's line of sight and did I mention deadlines? [As an aside, I'm not sure which type of deadline is more stressful, the ongoing drain of fortnightly releases under Agile, or the chaos of a big-bang release that is preceded by lengthier periods of relative calm.] When it…

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21/09/2017 No Comments

RCN and Grande Communications select Netcracker

RCN and Grande Communications Select Netcracker's Revenue Management Solution to Optimize B2B and B2C Customer Experience. Netcracker Technology announced that digital TV, phone and internet service provider RCN has selected Netcracker's Revenue Management solution to improve efficiencies at both RCN and Grande Communications. RCN and Grande will use Netcracker's platform for standardizing all billing-related processes across its seven offices and plans to use these solutions to…

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20/09/2017 No Comments

Increasing the percentage of digital revenues

The diagram above comes from research by AT Kearney and Delta Partners courtesy of an article by Mark Newman of TM Forum. It provides an interesting perspective on CSPs' ability to "compete" with a broader, more digitally native group of service providers. The golden age for CSPs was when they transported data from point A to point B (ie data and voice services) and people performed…

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20/09/2017 No Comments