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How does OSS architecture cope with exponential growth

Yesterday's blog covered how exponential growth in ICT industries has been (and will continue to be) a challenge for all of us in OSS-land. We've already seen some fundamental changes in OSS in recent years to be able to cope with the massive growth in device counts, bandwidth demands, etc. We've seen hyper-scaled hardware/software platforms becoming much more common as well as the load-balanced interfaces that…

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12/10/2016 No Comments

How can OSS keep up with exponential progress?

We've all heard of Moore's Law, which predicts the semiconductor industry's ability to exponentially increase transistor density in an integrated circuit. "Moore's prediction proved accurate for several decades, and has been used in the semiconductor industry to guide long-term planning and to set targets for research and development. Advancements in digital electronics are strongly linked to Moore's law: quality-adjusted microprocessor prices, memory capacity, sensors and even the…

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11/10/2016 No Comments

More cars registered for phone numbers than did handsets in Q1/16

"In the first quarter of 2016, more cars were registered for phone numbers in the US than were personal cell phones." From an article named, "Five technologies for the next ten years" The article starts, "Over the next decade, mobile, the Internet of Things, machine learning, robotics, and blockchain technologies will change a great deal..." The report talks about how these technologies will change the oil…

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10/10/2016 No Comments

Is being an OSS chameleon an advantage or disadvantage?

One of the interesting parts of starting a new OSS project or new customer is figuring out their mode of operation. For example, some architects want high-level requirements to design their own solution against. Others want you to document the requirements so tightly that you're effectively designing the solution for them (eg field mappings, data structures, interface designs, etc). I'm comfortable operating in either mode (and…

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07/10/2016 No Comments

Apttus and Comptel collaborate

Apttus and Comptel Collaborate to Deliver B2C Customer Journey Solution Built on the Salesforce Communications Industry Framework. Apttus, the category-defining Quote-to-Cash solution provider, and Comptel Corporation, today announced the launch of a new end-to-end offering for the consumer communications segment. As CSPs (Communications Service Providers) evolve to meet the demands of modern business, they’ve turned to leading cloud solutions to complete their customer-centric transformations. This joint…

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06/10/2016 No Comments

GWI adopts VETRO FiberMap

GWI Adopts VETRO FiberMap™ SaaS Platform for Broadband Network Mapping & Fiber Management. VETRO FiberMap™ announced that GWI, a rapidly growing internet service provider (ISP), has adopted VETRO FiberMap™ as a core business platform. Through the power of APIs and a user-friendly open architecture that is unique in the industry, VETRO FiberMap™ provides GWI with a secure, flexible, cloud-based platform. This solution helps GWI plan, design,…

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06/10/2016 No Comments

Redknee implements for Omantel

Redknee Successfully Implements Multi-Play Monetization for Omantel. Redknee Solutions Inc. announced the successful implementation of Redknee Unified, a converged multi-play billing, charging and customer care platform at Omantel, a leading communication service provider (CSP) in the Middle East. The successful implementation of Redknee Unified transformed Omantel’s IT infrastructure across multiple lines of business including mobile, fixed, IPTV, Internet, and cable. Redknee Unified reduces time to market…

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06/10/2016 No Comments

Leveraging synthetic OSS transactions to assure the user experience

Five nines is a catch-cry in the telco industry. There's a view that we should measure the up-time of all the devices in our network and they should all reach the gold standard of 99.999% (ie downtime is less than five and a half minutes per year). But how many times have you seen an ops team quoting their five nines KPIs, whereas the users are…

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06/10/2016 No Comments

How would your OSS handle a troop of chaos monkeys?

A recent blog discussed the concept of running fire drills on your OSS to see how your organisation would handle outages. In Monday's blog, we discussed where OSS customers are going to be and what their requirements are going to look like. The "Telcos as OTT players" model will be hyperscaled and more "transient by nature - services, contracts, capacity, etc. will be spun up and…

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05/10/2016 No Comments

You’re an OSS expert. Have you heard about GDPR?

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It seems to be gaining momentum as a framework for personal data protection. Various governments have been releasing data protection Acts of their own lately too. At the moment the focus appears to be on data privacy within public bodies, but big business is sure to be required to meet similar demands too. It hadn't really dawned on me just how…

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04/10/2016 2 Comments

Where does Sam Walton think OSS customers are going to be?

"Don't build where they are. Build where they're going to be." Sam Walton. Sounds like a persuasive argument and not dissimilar to Wayne Gretzky's famous quote about skating to where the ice hockey puck is going to be. Sam Walton had plenty of proof to back up this claim (as did Gretzky). Walton was after all one of the most successful retailers of the 20th century.…

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03/10/2016 2 Comments

Google to Hire 1,000 People to Boost Its Cloud Business

Google to Hire 1,000 People to Boost Its Cloud Business. Google wants to change how it relates to enterprise customers, and it’s going to use Google Cloud to do so. Today at an event in San Francisco, it made announcements about machine learning, Kubernetes, and expansion of its Google Cloud Platform presence. But the bigger-picture news is that cloud will be taking a leading role at…

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01/10/2016 No Comments

O2 extends with Netcracker

O2 Extends Strategic Billing Partnership with Netcracker. Netcracker Technology announced that Telefónica UK, which operates as O2, has extended and expanded its relationship with Netcracker by signing a multiyear renewal, including an enterprise license for its Revenue Management solution. O2 supports 20 million subscribers in its retail and wholesale business lines using Netcracker software and services. The continued Support & Maintenance services will allow O2 to…

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30/09/2016 No Comments

How channel disintegration can show us a more valuable OSS

I'm currently working on an assignment that is slightly left-field for the typical OSS consultant, but is giving me a different angle on OSS than I've had before. I'm working on a predominantly IVR-based project, but considers journeys through multiple customer contact channels. In theory, it has nothing to do with OSS, but I'm finding that it has more relevance than I expected. Let's say that…

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30/09/2016 No Comments

OpenDaylight launches “Powered by OpenDaylight” certifications

OpenDaylight Project Launches “Powered by OpenDaylight” Program for Ecosystem SDN Solutions. The OpenDaylight Project announced the launch of its “Powered by ODL” program, which signals compliance with exceptional technical standards and quality for commercial products or services based on the platform. The OpenDaylight ecosystem continues to grow and mature, with increasing numbers of solution providers incorporating OpenDaylight code into downstream commercial offerings. End users are increasingly…

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29/09/2016 No Comments

Redknee transforms MGI Telecom

Redknee Unified Transforms MGI Telecom to Support Growth. Redknee Solutions announced that Swiss-based MGI Telecom AG (mgi) recently replaced a legacy solution and launched Redknee Unified. Redknee led a complete transformation, deploying Redknee Unified to add advanced capabilities to enable growth. Redknee’s virtualized and cloud-based converged charging and billing platform will support mgi’s growth strategy by allowing for the launch of new and innovative real-time cross-service…

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29/09/2016 No Comments

Putting the IT fox in charge of the OSS hen house

Most telcos service a large demographic of customers that span almost every generation. Some of those customers are familiar with technology and others have the deluded belief that clouds are made up of water particles, not songs, apps, videos, VMs, etc. So if a large cross-section of the user-base doesn't know their way around technology, then why do we have the vendor's IT geeks designing OSS…

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29/09/2016 No Comments

How many truck rolls before you know you have a problem?

Apart from an obvious passion for OSS (is the URL a giveaway?), I also have a passion for real estate and property development. You'd think these fields are a long way removed, but today's story ties them together. I had one multi-townhouse development that took 3.5 years in the council approval cycle. The council team was constantly complaining because they had a mountainous backlog of developments…

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28/09/2016 No Comments

Build-measure-learn loops in OSS

"Whilst doing rather than planning has been a hugely successful tactic for entrepreneurs and their investors, before I go any further I want to note that as with everything you can take it too far. To get the best chance of achieving huge success, and avoid getting stuck at a local maxima, a certain amount of thinking should be done before building starts. There’s a balance…

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27/09/2016 No Comments

If it’s good for Jeff Bezos

"For a period of time, Jeff Bezos was a heavy investor in marketing, but after a while he retrenched. “About three years ago we stopped doing television advertising. We did a 15-month-long test of TV advertising. And it worked, but not as much as the kind of price elasticity we knew we could get from taking those ad dollars and giving them back to consumers,” said…

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26/09/2016 No Comments

To be a better technologist…

... you have to look beyond the technology. Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of catching up with a friend who is CEO and founder of a successful information security consultancy firm. The great thing about his industry at the moment is that there is more demand (ie information and systems that needs to be secured) than supply (ie resources to secure said information /…

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23/09/2016 No Comments