Your OSS is either a catalyst for innovation or a roadblock to progress for your business. The same strategies that built your OSS might now be the reason it’s slowing you down. If your OSS was built for yesterday’s challenges, the question is - will it be ready for tomorrow’s opportunities? Is it time to rethink your approach? Do you know where to start? We recently…
Read More »For decades, OSS has followed the same pattern: design, then keep adding lots more "baked-in" capabilities into a complex OSS UI, process inputs, generate outputs. At incredible scale. We made them faster, (somewhat) more automated, and vastly more scalable. But we never made them think. Until now... If... (we'll come back to the if shortly). But first, I'd like to share a concept from Greg Isenberg…
Read More »What if your OSS transformation is already outdated before your project even begins and you don't even know it yet? There's one overlooked step that separates forward-thinking OSS teams from those stuck in the past. It's a step that, if not implemented, leaves teams destined to introduce insignificant, incremental changes to their OSS (at best) in the future rather than being truly transformational. For some customers,…
Read More »In 2010, Cloud was a $24 Billion market. Today, it’s $600 Billion. AI is guaranteed to be even bigger. The AI infrastructure boom is building—and telcos must decide if they’re buyers or sellers. Cloud giants built their fortunes by leveraging infrastructure that telcos helped create. Yet, telcos saw only a fraction of the profits. Now, AI is set to transform industries on a scale even larger…
Read More »Most entrepreneurs are wired to build from scratch. The idea of founding something original, of bringing a vision to life from the ground up, is deeply embedded in startup culture. But what if this isn't the smartest way to scratch your entrepreneurial OSS-builder itch? The obsession with starting anew often overlooks a powerful alternative: acquiring an existing business that has already survived the grind phase. When…
Read More »Alfred Hitchcock is known as one of the greatest storytellers in the history of cinema. He's famous for movies such as Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window and many others. What's far less well known is that he very successfully employed a two-script method, which interestingly, has the potential to be applied to the OSS industry. The OSS industry is notorious for its buyer/seller chasm - a disconnect…
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A good friend and OSS/BSS collaborator, Raman, recently asked me, "Wish they made it (buying OSS/BSS solutions) as simple as buying cars. If I have a budget of $50K for my family car to take me from Point A to Point B, I won’t be talking to luxury German brands, only looking at some pragmatic options. Did I just give you an idea for your next…
Read More »FWIW, we've just uploaded our OSS/BSS Interface Specification Template onto the Passionate About OSS download page, which includes lots of worked examples. You can grab it here and start updating for your OSS/BSS interfaces: https://passionateaboutoss.com/product/oss-bss-interface-specification-template We'd love to hear your comments if you have other suggestions for what else should be included.
Read More »In the telecommunications industry, Tier-2 (smaller) network operators often look up to their larger Tier-1 counterparts as models for building networks, telco standards and operational support systems (OSS). However, and the Tier-1 operators will never admit to this, but the lessons don’t always need to flow top-down from T1 to T2. In fact, the pragmatic approaches that Tier-2 operators adopt due to budget constraints can provide…
Read More »Are you about to embark on an OSS transformation? It's a huge journey that awaits. It won't be without risks and fears either. Like any journey, it all starts with the old cliche of starting with the first step! When helping organisations embarking on their transformation journeys, there's typically three primary transformation models for you to consider: Buy an Off-the-Shelf Solution: This approach involves procuring a…
Read More »We recently discussed how the "Ultimate Game," a study in behavioural psychology, might help to explain why there tends to be less initial animosity between carriers and open-source OSS vendors compared with proprietary / paid vendors. And like the rest of the buyer/seller chasm series, we also discussed the three main reasons for the lengthy "match-making dance" between buyers (carriers) and sellers (OSS vendors) that delays starting…
Read More »The great thing about the holiday period is you often get the chance to step away from business as usual (BAU) activities. As customer projects go into a brief hiatus, it clears a little space in the calendar to read and plan for what to do in the year ahead. This book "It's Not the Big That Eat the Small...It's the Fast That Eat the Slow:…
Read More »Last year, we published a series of articles about the chasm that exists between OSS/BSS buyers and sellers. “The chasm” is best exemplified by the situation where: A buyer (eg network operator) desperately wants a new OSS to improve operational efficacy and every seller (eg a software vendor) desperately wants to sell their OSS to the buyer, yet it still tends to take 18-24 months* to…
Read More »Whilst setting up for another new initiative this week I became aware that the PAOSS blog has just ticked past 1 million words. And that's not including all the other pages or downloads available on the PAOSS website. I knew I loved talking about OSS (which was the whole reason for starting this blog), and with anyone who would listen [perhaps even quite a few who…
Read More »In our "chasm" series of articles, we've talked about the gap that exists between OSS buyers (eg carriers or network operators) and OSS sellers (eg vendors, integrators, etc). The buyers desperately want new systems to improve their business operations and the sellers desperately want to sell the solutions they create. Why then the 18 month to 2 year sales cycles? Put simply, it's the chasm. Today…
Read More »Have you ever had an OSS or BSS project that's impacted by poor data quality? The problem of data integrity gets raised on almost every project we get involved with here at PAOSS, especially when passive assets such as cables, splice joints, etc are involved. Our systems face a perennial challenge of poor data quality. As we aim to add increasing levels of automation into our…
Read More »"One of my favorite things about designing software is designing the defaults. The defaults define the experience for everyone out of the box. And, therefore, for most people in perpetuity. Convention over configuration rules the day. To me, everything it could possibly do is less interesting than what it does right now, factory fresh. At 37signals we call this The Golden Path and we discuss it…
Read More »Have you ever been tasked with mapping out the processes for the telco you work for? Either as a way of documenting current state, or just to perform a first-time mapping for your company? It can be a lengthy exercise, and based on the regular feedback we get, a daunting task too. There are some wonderful resources, including TM Forum's eTOM and AXELOS's ITIL frameworks. These…
Read More »In the last week alone, I've had two potent reminders that the world of OSS is simply (pun intended) too complex. This manifests in many ways, but I'll start with the standards that underpin our industry. The standards bodies do fantastic work. I'm a huge fan. Enormous credit should go out to everyone who has contributed to the development of the multitude of standards because I…
Read More »It seems fairly obvious (to me at least) that AI is an existential threat to many traditional information-based roles like consultants and architects. I've already seen one wave of this happen, so the next seems inevitable too. When I first entered the field of IT and telco consulting back in 2000, our clients engaged us because we had knowledge of, and/or access to, information that they…
Read More »I've just finished reading the book, "Elon Musk," by Walter Isaacson. It's a fascinating study of a fascinating, and highly polarising engineer. Polarising, but also inspiring (inspiring what to avoid as much as inspiring what one could/should/can do). Musk's biography cites example after example of his ability to think big, but also think very small to solve problems across complex industries like space travel and automobiles.…
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