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Bimodal demographics represent a challenge and an opportunity for CSPs

Yesterday's blog spoke of the challenges faced by traditional service providers to simplify their product stacks when compared with their OTT counterparts. Unlike the OTT players, removal of product lines tends to be revenue dilutitive. The other challenge facing the traditionalists is the demographics they serve compared with the OTT players. The OTT players tend to serve a digitally-savvy demographic. Take Amazon for example. They service…

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23/12/2016 No Comments

NFV has the potential to amplify the OSS pyramid of pain

In two recent posts, we've discussed the changing world order of OSS with NFV as a catalyst, and highlighted the challenges posed by maintaining legacy product offerings (the pyramid of OSS pain). These two paradigms (and others such as the touchpoint explosion) are dragging traditional service providers closer to a significant crossroad. Network virtualisation will lead to a new array of products to be developed, providing…

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22/12/2016 2 Comments

NFV as the catalyst for a new OSS world order

"operators that seek to implement NFV without preparing their OSS to support it are unlikely to be successful in capturing the new revenue-generating and cost-saving opportunities. OSS should not be an afterthought; it will continue to be central to the operational efficiency and agility of the service provider." James Crawshaw in "Next-Gen OSS for Hybrid Virtualized Networks." The quote above comes via an article by Ray…

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21/12/2016 No Comments

Communicating the OSS faith

"Sometimes communicating to someone that you have faith in them and believe they can succeed is all they need to actually succeed." Keith Cameron Smith. As you might have guessed, I spend a lot of time working in and analysing the OSS industry. I've also worked in many countries and organisations on OSS-related projects. This all leads to the obvious - I've worked alongside many, many…

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20/12/2016 No Comments

Your OSS, but with an added zero!

"We're woefully unprepared to deal with orders of magnitude. Ten times as many orders. One-tenth the number of hospital visits. Ten times the traffic. One-tenth the revenue. Ten times as fast. Because dramatic shifts rarely happen, we bracket everything on the increment, preparing for just a relatively small change here or there. We think we're ready for a 1 inch rise in sea level, but ten…

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19/12/2016 No Comments

Comptel wins new deal in Denmark

Comptel Has Won a New Deal for Monetizer in Denmark. Comptel has won a new deal for the Monetizer policy and charging control product in Denmark. The deal is a continuation of a long customer relationship and it includes licenses and services. The value of the deal is approximately 1.3 million euros. With Monetizer, operators can create, configure, launch and modify dynamic contextual packages as well…

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17/12/2016 No Comments

Nokia acquires Deepfield

Nokia to acquire Deepfield to power network and service automation with real-time, big data analytics. Nokia announced plans to acquire Deepfield, the US-based leader in real-time analytics for IP network performance management and security. The acquisition will extend Nokia's leadership in real-time, analytics-driven network and service automation, providing customers including communications service providers, cable operators and cloud, webscale and large technology companies with greater network and…

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17/12/2016 No Comments

NetLink Trust selects Amdocs

NetLink Trust Selects Amdocs to Implement Next-Generation B/OSS to Enhance Fiber Broadband Customer Experience. Amdocs announced that NetLink Trust, Singapore’s nationwide telecommunications infrastructure provider, has selected Amdocs to deliver a next-generation business and operations support system (B/OSS) to transform its legacy systems and fully automate order management, service design and delivery processes and service assurance. Amdocs’ solution aims to accelerate delivery time for fiber connectivity and…

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16/12/2016 No Comments

Sunrise selects Amdocs

Sunrise Selects Amdocs to Further Digitalize Call Center Operations, Improving Customer Service. Amdocs announced that Sunrise, the largest private service provider in Switzerland offering mobile, fixed, broadband Internet and TV services, has selected to enhance its existing Amdocs customer management solution to further digitalize its call center operations. Following rollout, Sunrise will be able to equip its call-center agent screens with a single, intuitive and process-driven…

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16/12/2016 No Comments

Mining OSS data for gold

OSS's reason for being is to deliver efficiency and insights (and monitoring). If we focus in on the insights component of that, where do we look for insights? In many cases, we hone in on particular insights because we're looking for evidence on something specific, to either prove or disprove a concept. In a way, it's like an investigator asking a range of different questions of…

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16/12/2016 No Comments

Do you have an OSS exit strategy?

"If I hear something where I want to put a gun in my mouth, it's that boring, I smell money. You wanna open a restaurant? You wanna open a fashion brand? You wanna start a jewelry line? You wanna produce movies? You better have a steady income, because you're not going to make a lot of money and you're going to work your ass off. Why?…

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15/12/2016 No Comments

The pyramid of OSS pain

The diagram below is a crass over-simplification of where the source of OSS pain (ie complexity) tends to originate from. If an organisation has complexity in the upper-most layer (ie products), then this is bound to flow downstream, amplifying along the way and culminating in increased complexity at support systems like OSS/BSS. If there are many products, with many different variants of features, bundles, offers, incentives,…

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14/12/2016 No Comments

What to focus on when selecting a new OSS

One of the things that I've noticed when organisations are looking to select a new OSS is that there is a tendency to focus on the functionality. That's one way and it can be a successful way of identifying the requirements that you need to benchmark against. I've also helped organisations with their vendor selection processes using an approach based on this model. However, over time…

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13/12/2016 No Comments

Why would Warren Buffett short the OSS industry?

"Now if at the start of the 20th century you had seen what the auto [industry] was going to do to this country, the impact it would have on the lives of then your children and grandchildren and so on. It just, it transformed the American landscape. But of those 2000 companies, three basically survive. And they haven’t done that well, many times. So how do you…

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12/12/2016 No Comments

Comptel wins new customer in Middle East

Comptel Has Won New Customer for Digital Sales Channel FWD in Middle East. Comptel Corporation has won a new customer for its digital sales channel solution, FWD. Comptel’s first SaaS solution will make it possible to purchase time-based data packages from an international operator in the Middle East. The transaction value of the deal is based on the number of subscribers adopting the FWD solution. "FWD…

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10/12/2016 No Comments

OSS at the centre of the universe

"Historically, the center of the Universe had been believed to be a number of locations. Many mythological cosmologies included an axis mundi, the central axis of a flat Earth that connects the Earth, heavens, and other realms together. In the 4th century BC Greece, the geocentric model was developed based on astronomical observation, proposing that the center of the Universe lies at the center of a…

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09/12/2016 No Comments

Synchronoss to acquire Intralinks

Synchronoss Technologies to Acquire Intralinks Holdings Accelerating Strategic Transformation. Synchronoss Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:SNCR) and Intralinks Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:IL) announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement for Synchronoss to acquire Intralinks for approximately $821 million in equity value. Under the terms of the agreement, Synchronoss will commence a cash tender offer to acquire all of the outstanding common stock of Intralinks for $13.00 per share.…

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08/12/2016 No Comments

What is the opportunity cost of not embarking on machine-led decision support?

In earlier blogs, we've referenced this great article on SingularityHub to show how the exponentiality of technological progress tends to surprise us as change initially creeps up on us, then overwhelms us in situations like this: But what if we changed the "exponential growth surprise factor" in the diagram above to "opportunity cost?" Further to yesterday's blog about the uselessness but value of making predictions, we…

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08/12/2016 No Comments

OSS predictions are useless… but invaluable

"Planning is useless but planning is invaluable. Predictions are useless but invaluable." Scott Galloway. The world of OSS, if it's even called that anymore, is in a rapid state of change. Business models, delivery models, network topologies, IT platforms, test methodologies and more are creating impacts that are changing our industries and that's not even taking into account the innovative and disruptive OSS products that are…

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07/12/2016 No Comments

Packaging your OSS products for rapid rollout

Yesterday's blog spoke of building an ultra-cut-down version of OSS products to get them in and working quickly. That blog leads into an interesting concept being used in the Agile world, Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) [Hat tip to Scott for bringing this to my attention]. "WSJF is a scheduling algorithm (or if you prefer, prioritisation method) that maximises the amount of whatever it is you…

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06/12/2016 No Comments