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:…
Read More »Dialog Consolidates All Billing on Netcracker's Next-Generation Revenue Management Platform. Netcracker Technology announced that Dialog Axiata, a subsidiary of Axiata Group Berhad, has expanded its partnership with Netcracker by using Netcracker's Customer Billing Management solution to consolidate billing across all lines of business into a single platform. This expansion will bring Dialog's retail and enterprise fixed-line subscribers onto Netcracker's BSS, which already bills for Dialog's GSM,…
Read More »Telenet Selects Netcracker for Comprehensive Digital BSS Transformation. Netcracker Technology announced that Telenet has selected Netcracker to be its strategic partner and initiate a comprehensive digital transformation to leverage its cable and wireless assets and deliver the most innovative services and outstanding customer experience to its more than 2 million customers. This digital transformation program aims to: •Integrate its recent acquisition of BASE's 3 million wireless…
Read More »TM Forum Live is currently bringing together some of the leading thinkers in the world of OSS at a gathering in France. Whilst I can't be there, a colleague is representing PAOSS and relayed this message: Best quote in my opinion was Shahar Steiff of PCCW - "Open source isn't like free candy - it's like a free puppy!" Great analogy. Open source, like a puppy,…
Read More »Last week we compared OSS to Theseus' ship, how it was constantly being rebuilt mid-voyage, then posing the question whether it was still actually the same ship. OSS transformation is increasingly becoming a Theseus' ship model. In the past, we may've had the chance to do big-bang cutovers, where we simply migrated users from one solution to another. This doesn't seem to be the case anymore,…
Read More »Have you ever noticed that you sometimes end up so wrapped up in the OSS project or activity you're doing that you lose track of everything that's going on around you? This is an example of being inside the bubble. This is great for getting in the flow of what you're doing. The challenge can be getting new ideas into the bubble or back into the…
Read More »Nuage Networks SD-WAN solutions selected to transform business service offerings of Telefónica. Nuage Networks, the Nokia venture focused on software-defined networking (SDN) solutions, announced a partnership with Telefonica Group that will deliver automated end-to-end services leveraging next-generation cloud technology to several thousand global enterprise customers. Specifically, Telefonica selected Nuage Networks as its provider for next-generation Software Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) services based on Nuage Networks…
Read More »Orange Belgium Expands Relationship with Amdocs for Digital Enablement of its Prepaid Operations. Amdocs announced that Orange Belgium has signed a three-year agreement with Amdocs for digital-enablement services in support of its prepaid operations. Orange Belgium, which is one of the leading telecom providers in the country offering mobile, Internet and TV services, is looking to introduce operational enhancements that will allow it to offer new…
Read More »KT Transforms Charging Operations with Amdocs Enabling Rapid Service Introduction. Amdocs announced that KT Corporation, the largest quad-play service provider in South Korea, is live with a single real-time convergent charging system and a single product catalog from Amdocs in support of all of its lines of business. As a result, KT can rapidly introduce personalized and contextualized quad-play services and shared data plans across fixed,…
Read More »"When you evaluate the market, you’re looking to understand where people are today. You empathize. Then you move into storytelling. You tell the story of how you can make their lives better. That’s the “after” state. All marketing ever does is articulate that shift. You have to have the best product, and you’ve got to be the best at explaining what you do… at articulating your…
Read More »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…
Read More »"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.…
Read More »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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