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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »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…
Read More »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…
Read More »"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.…
Read More »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…
Read More »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…
Read More »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,…
Read More »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…
Read More ». 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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »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,…
Read More »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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