"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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »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…
Read More »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…
Read More »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,…
Read More »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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »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.
Read More »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.
Read More »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…
Read More »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…
Read More »"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.…
Read More »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…
Read More »"To become a business asset, the role of data within an organization must move from being departmentally siloed to being centrally managed. Breaking down the siloes is not necessarily a technical challenge, but an organizational one. It requires a data strategy, the correct level of ownership and corporate governance. Data-as-a-business-asset means a single definition of the customer, ownership at an executive level and a well-managed change…
Read More »"Applying the Second Law of Thermodynamics to understanding reality, Boyd infers that individuals or organizations that don’t communicate with the outside world by getting new information about the environment or by creating new mental models act like a “closed system.” And just as a closed system in nature will have increasing entropy, or disorder, so too will a person or organization experience mental entropy or disorder…
Read More »Etisalat Enlists Comptel’s FWD to introduce cliQ to Sri Lankan Mobile Subscribers Comptel Corporation announced that Etisalat Sri Lanka has launched cliQ, its new offering designed to allow subscribers to purchase time-based mobile data packages by using Comptel’s FWD solution. As many mobile subscribers are ill-equipped to buy data in expensive and hard to understand bundles based on megabytes and gigabytes, cliQ provides a flexible and…
Read More »I recently met with an old friend who is now a leading Engineer in mega construction projects (I'm talking multi-billion dollar projects here). He told me that most of the lead construction companies struggle to make a profit from the main contract due to underestimating or perhaps just competitive bidding to ensure a pipeline of revenue. However, they remain highly profitable from a revenue model that…
Read More »"Many of you here are working on digitalisation projects but I would urge you to think bigger. You need to think about business model change – with existing customers or into whole new sectors. It isn’t just about product innovation. It’s about company innovation." Deborah Sherry at TM Forum Live! I really like the way Deborah is thinking (she's General Manager and Chief Commercial Officer of…
Read More »I was due to speak at TM Forum Live today but wasn't able to make it across to France this year. However, the talk will still continue on, so if you're in Nice please drop in to listen to Amrit Singh and Crispin Blackall talk about how Infosys and Telstra are using microservices to deliver on Telstra's next-generation of operational support tools. Details as follows: Date:…
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