In the past we've posed the concept of using a search front-end as a user friendly interface to the OSS of the future. This UI would have the ability to poll all of the disparate systems that make up an OSS / BSS stack and curate responses. The front-end would need to be smart, but I wonder whether its clever curation of data would actually reduce…
Read More »Over the last few days, this blog has been diving into the career steps that OSS (and tech) specialists can make in readiness for the inevitable changes in employment dynamics that machine learning and AI will bring about. You've heard all the stories about robots and AI taking all of our jobs. Any job that is repeatable and / or easy to learn will be automated.…
Read More »Getting literate in the language of the future posed the thought that data is the language of the future and therefore it is incumbent on all OSS practitioners to ensure their literacy. It also posed that data literacy provides a stepping stone to a future where machine learning is more prevalent. This got me thinking. We currently think about man-machine interfaces where we design ways for…
Read More »As we all know, digitalisation of everything is decreasing barriers to entry and increasing the speed of change in almost every perceivable industry. Unfortunately, this probably also means the half-life of opportunity exploitation is also shrinking. The organisations that seem to be best at leveraging opportunities in the market are the ones that are able to identify and act the quickest. They identify and act quickly...…
Read More »Nokia completes acquisition of Comptel. Nokia announced the successful completion of its acquisition of Comptel Corporation, a Finland-based telecommunications software company. The acquisition was announced February 9, 2017. The acquisition advances Nokia's strategy to build a standalone software business at scale by expanding and strengthening its software portfolio and go-to-market capabilities. Comptel bolsters Nokia's software portfolio by adding capabilities that help digital service providers bring new…
Read More »"Invert the iceberg - show just how much capability is hidden under the surface by mapping how dependant the organisation's positive outcomes are on its OSS (OSS as the puppet-master). All the sexy stuff (eg 5G, IoT, network virtualisation, etc) can only be monetised if our OSS pull all the strings to make them happen." Yesterday's post. Have you noticed that network teams and network vendors…
Read More »In the last couple of days, we've discussed frameworks that could allow CSPs to design disruptive business models around factors that our OSS / BSS can control. Not exactly riveting stuff for the tech-heads amongst the reader-base, but relevant for the amount of investment that gets directed into the tech projects that we all work on. Let me get a little more specific today. We only…
Read More »Redknee Unified Deployed at Smart as Customer Demand Quickly Grows in the Philippines. Redknee Solutions Inc. announced that Smart Communications (Smart) in the Philippines has awarded Redknee a services and support contract. Redknee Unified is an agile, flexible, and scalable converged billing, charging, and customer care platform that allows service providers to enhance their competitiveness and maximize value by quickly launching new revenue streams and service…
Read More »"The law of diminishing marginal utility is a theory in economics that says that with increased consumption, satisfaction decreases. ou are at a park on a winter's day, and someone is selling hot dogs for $1 each. You eat one. It tastes good and satisfies you, so you have another one, and another etc. Eventually, you eat so many, that your satisfaction from each hot dog…
Read More »We've all heard the stories about the communications services industry being ripe for disruption. In fact many over-the-top (OTT) players, like Skype and WhatsApp have already proven this fact for basic communications services, let alone the value-add applications that leverage CSP connectivity. As much as the innovative technologies they've built, the OTT players have thrived via some really interesting business models to service gaps in the market. The oft-quoted…
Read More »There's the "complete" way of doing Agile with all of the "best practices" and then there's the approach where you just take the "best parts," the parts that suit your needs. There are some great aspects to using Agile on OSS projects including the break-up of effort (epics / stories), the systematic prioritisation of work to cope with evolving requirements (sprints / scrums) and scoreboards/ visualisation.…
Read More »AscoTLC Selects Nuage Networks SDN and SD-WAN Technology to Offer Both Telco and Cloud Services. Nuage Networks, the Nokia venture focused on software-defined networking (SDN) solutions, announced its newest customer, Italian cloud services provider AscoTLC. AscoTLC is another example of a service provider offering automated cloud services for both SD-WAN and traditional datacenter SDN through the Nuage Networks platform. Nuage Networks SDN technologies enrich AscoTLC’s current…
Read More »The diagram below shows the six phases in a customer life-cycle as defined by Forrester Research: It also represents a map of the omni-channel experience for customers and approximates hand-off points. As far as the customer is concerned, the experience should be a seamless continual loop regardless of whether they engage via retail outlet, online, contact centre, chatbot, IVR, etc (or more likely, a somewhat random mix…
Read More »Hrvatski Telekom Selects Netcracker's Billing Solution to Monetize Fixed-Mobile Converged Services. Netcracker Technology announced that Hrvatski Telekom (HT) in Croatia has selected the Netcracker Billing solution as one of the key platforms for its large-scale IT transformation. HT will use Netcracker's solution and Consulting Services to commercialize and monetize its fixed-mobile convergence initiative. HT will also use Netcracker's Professional Services to consolidate legacy billing systems onto…
Read More »"Information overload is happening at all career levels. Companies restructure, and current staff absorb additional responsibilities, requiring new skills to be learned. Technology changes, and new systems, tools and processes need to be mastered. Markets change, and new strategies or client prospects or industry sectors need to be researched. To be successful in today’s times you need to master not only the skills relevant to your…
Read More »When discussing yesterday's post about increasing feedback loops in OSS, the technology gap on exponential technologies such as IoT, network virtualisation and machine learning reminded me of Geoffrey Moore's “Crossing the Chasm” as shown in the graph below. In the context of the abovementioned technologies, the chasm isn't represented by the adoption of a product (as per Moore's graph) but in the level of sophistication required to move…
Read More »"Amazon is making its Greengrass functional programming cloud-to-premises bridge available to all customers... This is an important signal to the market in the area of IoT, and also a potentially critical step in deciding whether edge (fog) computing or centralized cloud will drive cloud infrastructure evolution... The most compelling application for [Amazon] Lambda is event processing, including IoT. Most event processing is associated with what are…
Read More »"...don't ask your customers what they like or don't like about your product. Or what they'd change if they could. That's all about you. If you want really insightful answers, ask them about themselves instead. You can find out a ton about you by asking them about them." Jason Fried. We've previously discussed how the first date analogy applies to selling an OSS. Until reading Jason's…
Read More »Singapore has made some really innovative decisions over the years. Recent ones include tokenisation of the Singapore Dollar on cyber-currencies, investing heavily in international startups based in Singapore and the streamlining of identity management (which will undoubtedly help to get around one of the biggest blockers to self-on-boarding new customers onto comms networks, particularly mobile). Singapore perhaps lacks the natural commercial advantages (eg mining, manufacturing, agriculture,…
Read More »"It's quite common, especially in enterprise technology, for something to propose a new way to solve an existing problem. It can't be used to solve the problem in the old way, so 'it doesn't work', and proposes a new way, and so 'no-one will want that'. This is how generational shifts work - first you try to force the new tool to fit the old workflow,…
Read More »Tigo and Ericsson launch Business Support System (BSS) as a service in Rwanda. Tigo Rwanda has partnered with Ericsson to completely overhaul its Business Support System (BSS) ecosystem. Tigo Rwanda is the first operator across the Millicom group that has transformed its BSS operations and gone live with Ericsson's 'as a Service' model for its complete BSS needs. The solution covers the full spectrum of charging,…
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