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If you can’t repeat it, you can’t improve it

"The cloud model (ie hosted by a trusted partner) becomes attractive from the perspective of repeatability, from the efficiency of doing the same thing repeatedly at scale." From, "I want a business outcome, not a deployment challenge." OSS struggles when it comes to repeatability. Often within an organisation, but almost always when comparing between organisations. That's why there's so much fragmentation, which in turn is holding…

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19/09/2017 No Comments

What’s the next tool in your toolbelt?

As OSS exponents, I'm sure you'll agree that there are many OSS tools / skills that we use and develop (to differing degrees) over the years. In fact, there are so many to choose from that we often have to make a conscious decision which ones to master and which ones to leave for others to master. Other times we have the decision thrust upon us.…

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18/09/2017 No Comments

Bechtle selects Netcracker

Bechtle Selects Netcracker's Digital Platform for New Cloud-Based Portal and Enterprise Applications. Netcracker Technology announced that Bechtle AG is leveraging Netcracker's comprehensive BSS solutions to support its new cloud-based portal and marketplace, which will host a range of digital enterprise applications for its business customers across Europe. The use of Netcracker's solutions allows Bechtle to support consumption-based business models and open new revenue streams by offering…

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15/09/2017 No Comments

Omnichannel will remain disjointed until…

Omnichannel is intended to be a strategy that provides customers with a seamless, consistent experience across all of their contact channels - channels that include online/digital, IVR, contact centre, mobile app, retail store, B2B portal, etc. The challenge of delivering consistency across these platforms is that there is little cross-over between the organisations that deliver these tools. Each is a fragmented market in its own right…

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15/09/2017 No Comments

Cloudera enables Globe Telecom Machine Learning

Cloudera Enables Globe Telecom to Manage Mobile Data Growth and Boost Customer Experience with Machine Learning. Cloudera, Inc. announced that Globe Telecom has used the Cloudera platform to successfully enhance customer experience and deliver real-time targeted marketing campaigns and offers to its 60 million customers. Globe Telecom, a leading provider of telecommunication services in the Philippines, is using machine learning with Cloudera to enrich customer experiences…

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14/09/2017 No Comments

CSG teams with Arrow Electronics on IoT

CSG Teams with Arrow Electronics to Monetize the Internet of Things. CSG Systems International announced a new agreement with Arrow Electronics to enable quick launch and monetization of solutions across the Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT includes a network of internet-connected objects such as smart home devices, wearables and vehicles that collect and exchange data using embedded sensors. Under a new agreement, CSG will team…

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14/09/2017 No Comments

In desperate search of OSS flow

"Flow, also known as the zone, is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting loss in one's sense of space and time." Wikipedia. It's almost definitely no…

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14/09/2017 No Comments

Use cases for architectural smoke-tests

"I often leverage use-case design and touch-point mapping through the stack to ensure that all of the use-cases can be turned into user-journeys, process journeys and data journeys. This process can pick up the high-level flows, but more importantly, the high-level gaps in your theoretical stack." Yesterday's blog discussed the use of use cases to test a new OSS architecture. TM Forum's eTOM is the go-to…

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13/09/2017 No Comments

Use-case driven OSS architecture

When it comes to designing a multi-vendor (sometimes also referred to as best-of-breed) OSS architecture stack, there is never a truer saying than, "the devil is in the detail." Oftentimes, it's just not feasible to design every interface / integration / data-flow traversing a theoretical OSS stack (eg pre-contract award, whilst building a business case, etc). That level of detail is developed during detailed design or…

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12/09/2017 No Comments

A new, more sophisticated closed-loop OSS model

Back in early 2014, PAOSS posted an article about the importance of closed loop designs in OSS, which included the picture below: It generated quite a bit of discussion at the time and led me to being introduced to two companies that were separately doing some interesting aspects of this theoretical closed loop system. [Interestingly, whilst being global companies, they both had strong roots tying back…

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11/09/2017 No Comments

Altice and Amdocs partner

Altice USA and amdocs enter into multi-year partnership to establish industry-leading Business and Operational Support Systems. Altice USA, one of the largest broadband communications and video service operators in the U.S. and the provider of Optimum and Suddenlink-branded internet, TV and phone services, and Amdocs announced that they have extended their partnership and entered into a multi-year agreement for key business and operational support systems. The…

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09/09/2017 No Comments

Redknee raises Cdn$96 Million

Redknee Solutions Inc. Raises Cdn$96 Million. Redknee Solutions Inc. announced that it has closed its previously announced rights offering to holders of its subordinate voting shares (the "Rights Offering"). Under the Rights Offering, an aggregate of 108,519,936 subordinate voting shares were issued at a subscription price of Cdn$0.63 per share for gross proceeds to the Company of approximately Cdn$68 million. The net proceeds of the Rights…

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08/09/2017 No Comments

From pipeline to platform

"Amazon established an architecture to leverage its assets for implementing a wide range of business models in a repeatable way for the retail industry. In most cases, Amazon is exposing product offerings it doesn’t actually own. It carries some inventory for third parties, but its main tasks now are vetting retail partners, ensuring product quality, giving partners access to the marketplace, and arranging payment and delivery…

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08/09/2017 No Comments

An OSS knowledge plane for SDN

"We propose a new objective for network research: to build a fundamentally different sort of network that can assemble itself given high level instructions, reassemble itself as requirements change, automatically discover when something goes wrong, an automatically fix a detected problem or explain why it cannot do so. We further argue that to achieve this goal, it is not sufficient to improve incrementally on the techniques…

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07/09/2017 No Comments

Rostelecom demonstrates first multivendor transport SDN PoC

Rostelecom Demonstrates On-Demand Transport Services With the First Multivendor Transport SDN PoC in Russia. Rostelecom PJSC announced that is has successfully completed the first proof of concept (PoC) compatibility test for transport software-defined networking (SDN) in Russia. Optical networking equipment from Huawei, NEC and Netcracker and Nokia was included in the PoC, as well as their corresponding domain SDN controllers were managed by an umbrella transport…

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06/09/2017 No Comments

I want a business outcome, not a deployment challenge

"We can look and take lessons on how services evolved in the cloud space. Our customers have expressed how they want to take these services and want a business outcome, not a deployment challenge." Shawn Hakl. Make no mistake, cloud OSS is still a deployment challenge (at this nascent stage at least), but in the context of OSS, Shawn Hakl's quote asks the question, "who carries…

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06/09/2017 No Comments

Be afraid, be very afraid

"Just because you're afraid of doing something doesn't give you a permission slip to not do it." Debbie Millman. There's a lot of fear in OSS. So many things can go wrong (the OctopOSS theory), so much incompetence is created, so many nearly insurmountable integration challenges await and their complexity means that there is no perfect plan going into a project. They do require a leap…

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31/08/2017 No Comments

Can you define why OSS projects are so challenging?

Answer. Change creates incompetence. Whether on the vendor/integrator side, the customer side or along the strategic advisor line, OSS projects bring about constant change; massive change. I've often wondered why I can feel so incompetent in the world of OSS, even though I know more about it than (probably) any other topic. The answer has just dawned on me, as per above - change creates incompetence.…

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30/08/2017 No Comments

How would Einstein or Darwin manage an OSS?

"Here are a few questions I reflect on: - Am I excited to be doing what I'm doing or am I in aimless motion? - Are the trade-offs between work and my relationships well-balanced? - How can I speed up the process from where I am to where I want to go? - What big opportunities am I not pursuing that I potentially could? - What's…

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29/08/2017 No Comments

Functional silos can be dysfunctional

OSS are often delivered into large organisational structures, structures that are functionally siloed. For large OSS, even the OSS team can have multiple functional silos. Where there are functional silos, there are activities within OSS that need to be delivered across silos. That's where things can get a bit dysfunctional. Jurisdictions, ownership of responsibilities, agreements on approach, misalignments of performance indicators, downstream impacts and dare I…

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28/08/2017 No Comments

VMware scores ‘Huge Win’ with Vodafone for NFV

"VMware Scores ‘Huge Win’ with Vodafone for NFV" according to SDxCentral.com. VMware scored a “huge win” with Vodafone as a new network functions virtualization (NFV) customer, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger said yesterday. “We have seen a strong start to Q3; we just signed our largest-ever telco deal with Vodafone,” Gelsinger said on VMware’s second quarter fiscal year 2018 earnings conference call. He called the Vodafone deal…

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27/08/2017 No Comments