Passionate About OSS Blog | Passionate About OSS and BSS

Crossing the OSS tech chasm

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…

20/06/2017 No Comments

Getting ahead of feedback

"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…

19/06/2017 No Comments

The first date principle of product development

"...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…

16/06/2017 No Comments

The OSS / Singapore analogy

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,…

15/06/2017 No Comments

OSS that are painful and full of denial

"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,…

14/06/2017 No Comments

Tigo and Ericsson launch BSSaaS

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,…

14/06/2017 No Comments

That’s just a toy

"It is unquestionably true that many of the most important technology advances looked like toys at first - the web, mobile phones, PCs, aircraft, cars and even hot and cold running water at one stage looked like faddish toys for the rich or the young. Even video games, which literally are toys, are also largely responsible for the GPUs that now power the take-off of machine…

13/06/2017 No Comments

Looking outside for innovation strategy

"Brainstorms inside the company are useful but not as efficient as stepping outside and checking out the world around you. A lot of companies talk about innovation strategy. I always laugh when I hear that. In this rapidly changing world you cannot talk about innovation strategy anymore. That implies some sort of planning or forecasting the future. Innovation, especially in communication and technology business, you find…

09/06/2017 No Comments

The five data stakeholders

When it comes to data stakeholders (people / processes / systems / interfaces / etc), I like to think of them in five categories: Creators - The primary data creation / collection source, which could be people or machines Ingestors - The stakeholders that take the source data and compile it into a repository such as a database Curators / Librarians - The stakeholders that manipulate…

08/06/2017 No Comments

Colt selects NEC and Netcracker

Colt Selects NEC and Netcracker to Enhance its Network and Optimize for Virtualization. NEC Corporation and Netcracker Technology announced that Colt has selected them to enable and support its large-scale OSS transformation, which will support Colt in the deployment of the next generation of its infrastructure, including virtualization. Colt will leverage Netcracker's future-proof, next-generation OSS and Service Orchestration solution, which is a part of NEC/Netcracker's Agile…

08/06/2017 No Comments

OSS heirlooms

As we all know, an heirloom is an item that is passed from generation to generation. In the world of OSS, there are a lot of heirloom tools out in the wild. Their long-since-departed* sponsors / builders have ensured their legacy survives with the tools they have built. In the traditional context (eg jewelry, furniture, etc), the object is a valuable one. In the OSS context,…

07/06/2017 No Comments

Women in OSS

OSS doesn't seem to be a very enticing career for women unfortunately. Over all my years of OSS projects, I can't think of any where women outnumbered the men. However, my OSS projects have been interspersed with a variety of other projects where women have dominated the team numbers. Looking back, there's almost perfect correlation between the positivity of the project environment and the proportion of…

06/06/2017 1 Comment

The story of Mike Flint

"Mike Flint was Warren Buffett's personal airplane pilot for 10 years. (Flint has also flown four US Presidents, so I think we can safely say he is good at his job.) According to Flint, he was talking about his career priorities with Buffett when his boss asked the pilot to go through a 3-step exercise. Here's how it works… STEP 1: Buffett started by asking Flint…

05/06/2017 No Comments

AIS upgrades with Netcracker

AIS Upgrades to Netcracker's Revenue Management Solution to Optimize Customer Experience. Netcracker Technology announced that Advanced Info Service Public Company Limited (AIS) is upgrading to Netcracker 12 to deliver a better digital customer experience and meet myriad internal business objectives. As part of the engagement, AIS has also extended its use of Netcracker's Professional Services in order to ensure the long-term success of the platform. AIS…

03/06/2017 No Comments

OSS S-curves

"I should say... that in the real world exponential curves don’t continue for ever. We get S-curves which closely mimic exponential curves in the beginning, but then tail off after a while often as new technologies hit physical limits which prevent further progress. What seems to happen in practice is that some new technology emerges on its own S-curve which allows overall progress to stay on…

02/06/2017 2 Comments

Comptel wins order from Saudi Arabia

Comptel Has Received Significant Order from Saudi Arabian Customer. Comptel has received a significant order from a Saudi Arabian customer. The deal is a continuation of a long business relationship between the parties. The value of the contract is approximately 4.9 M euros covering services for Comptel FlowOne Fulfillment, Comptel Data Refinery and Comptel Fastermind suites.

31/05/2017 No Comments

Comptel wins new customer in Australia

Comptel has won a new customer in Australia. Comptel has won a new customer in Australia. The deal includes a proof of concept for Comptel’s FlowOne Fulfillment suite.

31/05/2017 No Comments

AI to practice as you play

I'm a die-hard sports fan, as a player and watcher, so I find it interesting how parallels are drawn between work and sport - in particular, that "you practice as you play." Alternatively, it's implied that if you practice sloppy, you play sloppy. But if we look at a professional athlete that dedicates 40 hours per week to their craft, perhaps only an hour of that…

29/05/2017 No Comments

Our tools going the way of the slide rule

My grandfather achieved many great things in his lifetime and I'm really proud to come from his lineage. I have many great memories of him and one perplexing one. When I was accepted into Engineering at Uni, he proudly presented me with his trusty slide-rule and stated that I'd be needing it in my course. Of course I thanked him but I'm somewhat embarrassed to say…

26/05/2017 No Comments

Customers buy the basic and learn to love the features

"Most customers buy the basic and learn to love the features, but the whole customer experience is based on trying to sell the features." Roger Gibson. This statement appears oh-so-true in the OSS sales pitches that I've observed. In many cases the customer really only needs the basic, but when every vendor is selling the features, customers also tend to get caught up in the features.…

25/05/2017 No Comments

OSS survivorship bias

Take a look at the image below. If you were told that the image showed where planes had taken hits in WWII before returning to base and were asked to recommend locations on the plane where armour should be strengthened, where would you choose? Would you choose to strengthen behind the cockpit and on the wingtips? "During World War II, the statistician Abraham Wald took survivorship…

24/05/2017 No Comments

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