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GCI Charts signs with CSG Managed Services

GCI Charts New Data Mediation Transformation Strategy with CSG Managed Services. CSG International, Inc. announced that it will leverage its CSG Intermediate™ data mediation solution and managed service approach to streamline operations and better support new services at Alaska-based GCI. GCI (NASDAQ: GNCMA) is one of the few quad-play providers globally, offering the four core services of wireless and wireline voice, video, and data communication services…

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11/05/2017 No Comments

360 degree OSS view from 6 blind men

"In the world of OSS, the blind men are like the 6 (or more) different departments – operations, business, IT, sales, marketing, executive, etc. Each interacts with the OSS elephant and each has a different experience with it." Yesterday's post on Six blind men and an OSS elephant. Each of us, and each of the stakeholder groups we represent, has a different perception of our OSS.…

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10/05/2017 No Comments

Six blind men and an OSS elephant

The concept of digital transformation can be massive… or it can stem from something much smaller. In digital transformation, there’s a mantra of simplify then transform. That makes perfect sense, in alignment with, "The chess-board analogy," but often overlooked. But there's another simplification perspective to take. Let's take the 6 blind men and the elephant parable into consideration. Each of the six blind men gets a…

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09/05/2017 No Comments

Accomplishing the incredible seems normal

"Jon: I started listening to audiobooks and podcasts 4-8 hours a day. James: Why was that your goal? Jon: If you spend the majority of your time in worlds where people are accomplishing incredible things, all of a sudden that starts to seem normal." Podcast discussion between Jon Morrow and James Altucher. The great thing about books and podcasts is that you usually get the best…

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08/05/2017 No Comments

TM Forum Melbourne Local Chapter

I enjoyed catching up with a few old friends and some new acquaintances at a TM Forum local chapter event last night in Melbourne. OSS vendor, DGiT, kindly hosted the event and TM Forum President Mike Lawrey shared some great insights in a speech ahead of TM Forum Live kicking off in Nice in the week after next. Unfortunately I won't be getting to Nice this…

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05/05/2017 No Comments

Centre of attention

There are a lot of OSS experts out there. There are a lot of people who know an extraordinary level of detail about certain aspects of OSS. I sure do admire those people. But do you know what? The people who I admire even more are the ones who understand the big picture. Knowing the big picture generally puts you in a greater position of influence…

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04/05/2017 No Comments

Digital twins

"Well-designed digital twins based on business priorities have the potential to significantly improve enterprise decision making. Enterprise architecture and technology innovation leaders must factor digital twins into their Internet of Things architecture and strategy" Gartner's Top 10 Technology Trends. Digital twinning has established some buzz, particularly in IoT circles lately. Digital twins are basically digital representations of physical assets, including their status, characteristics, performance and behaviors.…

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03/05/2017 No Comments

Designing your way out of jeopardy

In an earlier post entitled, "Looking Forward to Jeopardy and Fall-outs," I described a method for projecting forward to the likelihood of a design falling into a failure state and using that data to drive continual improvement. Not only that, but to drive the future of self-service telco designs, as I'll describe today! The diagram below shows the concept of a design tree. This tree can…

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02/05/2017 No Comments

Kafka stands before the law

Many of you will have heard of Kafka. Some may not. In a similar dichotomy, today I'll take two tangents on Kafka. The binding comes from Jay Kreps, the founder of Kafka the distributed streaming messaging system, who also happened to enjoy Franz Kafka's writings and named his open-source project after the writer. I'd become aware of a couple of telcos beginning to use Kafka (as…

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01/05/2017 No Comments

Virgin Media selects Netcracker

Virgin Media Leverages Netcracker's Managed Services for Revenue Management. Netcracker Technology announced that Virgin Media has expanded its relationship with Netcracker by selecting it as the managed services provider of choice for its Revenue Management solution. By using Netcracker's Managed Services, Virgin Media will be able to scale more flexibly while reducing the cost of operations. Virgin Media, part of the world’s largest international cable company,…

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01/05/2017 No Comments

The implications of a handshake

The handshake analogy compares: The number of people at a gathering to the number of handshakes required to greet them all; with The number of systems in an environment to the number of interfaces required to inter-link them (and associated complexity)). 1 person (system) = 0 handshakes (ie nobody else to shake hands with => 0 interfaces). 2 people (systems) = 1 handshake (1 interface) 3 people…

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28/04/2017 1 Comment

Total eclipse of the start-up

. Did you notice that I was channeling Bonnie Tyler in the title there? No? No matter... The concept in the diagram above is courtesy of Roger Gibson (yes, I made you [more] famous Roger). Obviously, it is showing that business models and technology are increasingly overlapping. This simple diagram also shows why the business/technology eclipse can only increase the relevance of OSS (in some shape…

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27/04/2017 No Comments

OSS chat bots

"Some pilots are proving quite interesting in enhancing Network Operations. Especially when AI / ML is used in the form of Natural language processing – NOC operators are talking to a ML system in natural language and asking questions in context to an alarm about deep topics ( BGP, 4G eUTRAN, etc). Do more with L1 engineers. – Use of familiar chat front ends like FB…

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26/04/2017 2 Comments

Communications Support Systems (CSS)

Have you ever worked in a big telco (or any large organisation for that matter)? Have you ever noticed the disconnection in knowledge / information? On a recent project, I was brought in as an external consultant to find potential improvements to one business unit's specific key performance indicator (KPI). As a consultant, my role is a connector - a connector of people, ideas, projects, products,…

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25/04/2017 No Comments

Looking forward to jeopardy and fall-outs

When we find that orders have gone into (are about to go into) a jeopardy state or a fall-out state, the experts are brought in and tend to work backwards to identify the problem and resolve it. But what if our OSS were able to predict the likelihood of future failure and present that information to operators? What if a certain series of similar steps /…

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24/04/2017 No Comments

Out-running the bear

"A bear jumps out of a bush and starts chasing two hikers. They both start running for their lives, but then one of them stops to put on his running shoes. His friends says, "What are you doing? You can't out-run a bear!" His friend replies, "I don't have to out-run the bear. I only have to out-run you!"" Let's say the two friends represent competing…

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21/04/2017 No Comments

OSS are too important to be just cost centres

When we distill it down, what are telcos selling? They're selling connections. Whether it's connecting with information, a group, another person, even a virtual assistant or machine-to-machine, we tend to use communications services to connect. Networks are an important component to establish those connections. OSS go a step further. They help to establish a connection but also help to maintain the ability to connect - via…

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20/04/2017 No Comments

Omni-experience orchestration

I've been seeing a lot of references to continual development methodologies lately (ie references to agile, DevOps, CI/CD, etc). Quotes like focus on projects rather than the mission statement, focus on products rather than projects, etc. The core principle is in chunking workload down into modular pieces that can be implemented to give flexibility and agility to meet evolving customer demands. These approaches are claimed to…

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19/04/2017 No Comments

The greatest currency is success

Whether it's at an individual, business unit or organisational level, demonstrated achievement on OSS projects tends to lead to greater opportunities and rewards. There are so many OSS projects underway globally and so much expertise required, but there are a high proportion of projects that don't deliver or are currently stagnating. This means opportunity. However, we generally don't tend to use testimonials as much as we…

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13/04/2017 No Comments

Bending over backwards

Over the years, I've dealt with (and worked with) many vendors, as I'm sure you have too. Some will bend over backwards to help their customers (or potential customers) out, finding workarounds to their own internal rules to help make something good happen. Others will persuade their customers into signing a contract before bending their customers over backwards, finding internal rules to their own workarounds to…

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12/04/2017 No Comments