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…
Read More »"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?…
Read More »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,…
Read More »Gartner's latest report, "Gartner Magic Quadrant for Integrated Revenue and Customer Management for CSPs" can be downloaded here courtesy of Ericsson.
Read More »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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »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.…
Read More »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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »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…
Read More »The OSS market has two ends of a continuum - one end consisting of what I refer to as "the self-service customer" (ie highly repeatable) and the other being "the requirement of one customer," (ie highly customised). Naturally there are contracts that fall on the continuum between these two extremes too. The self-service end of the market has proven to be a successful niche for some…
Read More »Yesterday's blog discussed the fact that many of the KPIs gathered and used by OSS / BSS could potentially conflict with other KPIs, even when used within a single organisation. It then posed a question: "Have you ever seen an organisation define a simplification metric as one of their highest-profile KPIs?" One of the biggest hurdles facing OSS projects, as described here in The triple constraint…
Read More »Anyone involved with OSS will know that it is a DBA (Death By Acronym) experience. We have so many acronyms to deal with, some known globally, others only with relevance to a specific organization. One of the most common acronyms is the KPI (Key Performance Indicators). What's scary is that the KPI is a catch-all phrase for a set of metrics that invariably have their own…
Read More »"McDonald's hit a peak moment of productivity by getting to a mythical scale, with a limited menu and little in they way of customization. They could deliver a burger for a fraction of what it might take a diner to do it on demand. McDonald's now challenges the idea that custom has to cost more, because they've invested in mass customization. Things that are made on…
Read More »I hold a somewhat philosophical view of where OSS (and IT in general) fits within its overall timeline. It's all pretty nascent in the grand scheme of things. Whilst communitications technology is the common thread, I've worked in many industries including construction, mining, engineering, government, utilities, emergency services, healthcare, farming and more. Most of these industries have been around for far longer than OSS. As the…
Read More »Have you noticed that TM Forum's eTOM seems to be used in common vernacular when people talk about mapping and/or comparing products. eTOM and TAM are both quite closely linked (you'll notice the similarities in colour-banding between the two). However, eTOM is more of a standardized mapping of workflows, whereas TAM is more of a mapping of standardized product functionalities. Since workflows follow a journey, often through multiple…
Read More »Yesterday's blogged posited that the OSS sales process - of joining a customer and a vendor to form a sales contract - tends to have serious flaws. Whilst deals still get done (you can see enough of them by clicking on the "News" category here on PAOSS), I've yet to see a deal where both parties were ecstatic about the whole process, notwithstanding the excitement of…
Read More »A couple of facts about the OSS market that you've probably already noticed - It's highly fragmented and the selling cycle tends to average 12-18 months. This means that cost of sales and cost of acquisition are a source of frustration for each side of the equation. Over the years, I've been privileged to have regularly sat on either side of the OSS buying equation. I've worked…
Read More »Analytics is a term that has caught fire in IT relatively recently. In many ways, our OSS have been doing "analytics" for years, albeit not necessarily with the same tools at their disposal. If we simplify the term down to the use case of "being able to ask questions of a massive data store" then that's what OSS have been doing almost since their inception decades…
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