Passionate About OSS Blog | Passionate About OSS and BSS

Huawei claims improved management of SDN Networks

Huawei Claims to Improve O&M Efficiency of SDN Networks. At Huawei Connect 2016 in Shanghai, Huawei announced the launch of its updated Cloud Fabric 5.0 system for cloud services. It now has a Huawei Fabric Insight Refined Operations and Maintenance (O&M) system as its core. The O&M system locates faults through visualized network status measurement and management, including big data-based analysis, enabling customers to improve O&M…

08/09/2016 No Comments

Managing automations

"Making the business case for NFV isn't difficult in one sense; we already know that the only thing that can really drive NFV from its current point to early success is operations cost reduction through service automation. The problem for vendors is that only seven or eight vendors can actually provide the essential tools. You have to automate services from top to bottom, end to end,…

08/09/2016 No Comments

ECOMP (Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management & Policy)

AT&T's ECOMP (Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management & Policy) Architecture White Paper can be found here. It provides a reference architecture and a breakdown of the components that AT&T are using to manage their virtualised network functions. It's an interesting take on MANO / OSS in a carrier environment, especially figure 3 that compares and contrasts ETSI's MANO architecture with ECOMP.

07/09/2016 No Comments

Captcha’ing OSS

You all know those captcha codes online to prove you're not a bot right (examples above)? They can be really obscure and annoying can't they? I contemplated adding captcha codes to the comments section under each blog to prevent the barrage of spam from overwhelming legitimate comments. That thought process didn't last long though - 1) I can use captcha codes and make my life easier,…

06/09/2016 No Comments

Diminishing OSS returns

The law of diminishing returns refer to a point at which the level of benefits gained is less than the amount of effort expended. In other words, reaching an asymptote of progressively less benefit for a given unit of effort. This is reflective of many jobs in the world, where their exponents quickly approach the asymptote of mastery. Not OSS though. An OSS maybe. Your OSS…

05/09/2016 3 Comments

Using deduction

"Eric Raymond proposed that a computer should 'never ask the user for any information that it can autodetect, copy, or deduce'; computer vision changes what the computer has to ask. So it's not, really, a camera, taking photos - it's more like an eye, that can see." Ben Evans here. There's a big buzzword going around our industry at the moment called "omnichannel." Consider it an…

02/09/2016 No Comments

Multiple persona disorder

It's almost time for our monthly OSS breakfast in Melbourne (last Wednesday of each month). Last month saw the attendance of the only UI / UX expert I know who also has OSS experience. It surprises me that there aren't more UI / UX / OSS experts out there, but I'm also not all that surprised if you know what I mean. As with most of…

29/08/2016 No Comments

OSS monkey mind

"Buddhists long ago observed what they call the “monkey mind”, the idea that the mind is inherently a bit restless and fidgety. If you don’t give it a clear task, it will either keep a running commentary, or wander off on tangents. Your head becomes filled with an endless, meandering chatter – a din that has been blamed for everything from anxiety to insomnia. The solution,…

26/08/2016 No Comments

Redknee wins Tier 1 contract in EMEA

Redknee Wins Multi-Million Dollar Contract To Enhance Customer Satisfaction for a Tier 1 CSP in EMEA. Redknee Solutions Inc. announced a multi-million contract to upgrade a Tier 1 communication service provider (CSP) in Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) to Redknee Unified 2016. The upgrade will support the creation of innovative real-time analytics-driven promotions and enable the CSP to deliver improved subscriber satisfaction and retention. This…

25/08/2016 No Comments

When phones swallowed physical objects

"...after a decade in which phones swallowed physical objects, with cameras, radios, music players and so on turned into apps, AR might turn those apps back into physical objects - virtual ones, of course. On one hand cameras digitise everything, and on the other AR puts things back into the world." Ben Evans here. Similarly, for years OSS have been like a black hole - sucking…

24/08/2016 No Comments

Netia extends with Netcracker

Netia Extends Revenue Management Partnership with Netcracker. Netcracker Technology announced that Netia, one of Poland’s largest telecommunications service providers, has extended its partnership for support and maintenance services. These capabilities will enable Netia to bring innovative offerings to the market faster and provide greater visibility into end-to-end billing and revenue management operations. The extension also means that Netia has the option to upgrade Netcracker’s Revenue Management…

24/08/2016 No Comments

IVR to OSS

Question for the community. Have any of you heard of (or experienced) a Telco using data out of their IVRs (Interactive Voice Response) solutions to link up with OSS data? There is a current trend to use merge social data sets to determine customer sentiment and potentially cross-reference against network health and other OSS/BSS data sets. With IVRs having the ability to convert speech to text,…

23/08/2016 4 Comments

Cisco to pivot to software

Cisco’s Robbins: We’ll transition our revenues to a software, subscription-based model. Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins is set on pivoting the routing giant toward becoming a software-based vendor, signaling its desire to satisfy customers like AT&T which is transitioning its network to software by the end of this decade. “We believe we will transition more of our revenues to a software and subscription based model and accelerate…

20/08/2016 No Comments

Sankey diagrams go with the flow

There can be many parts that make up an operator's provisioning factory. There can also be multiple different software packages that contribute towards getting an order through the factory. In addition to that, there are usually many different activities that need to take place, some automatic, some manual, some as external dependencies, conditional gates, etc. That's why operators design process maps and why most OSS have…

18/08/2016 No Comments

Customer demand influence

“Global telecommunications study: navigating the road to 2020.” In the study listed above, executives at some of the world's largest CSPs indicate that the players most likely to disrupt their industry is OTT app providers. Any thoughts on why they might be perceived to be 30x more influential than technology specialists, or 5x more influential than cable/satellite operators? My take is that it's because OTT app…

17/08/2016 No Comments

Understanding an OSS shopping list

I recently read this great scenario in a customer's requirements gathering guide and it can be related to the capturing of OSS requirements too. As a husband, I can also relate more directly to the scenario. ;) Wife says... I sent my husband grocery shopping for: Tomato paste Shampoo Apples Extra Virgin Olive Oil Milk Chocolate He comes back with: Tomato paste Shampoo Apples Extra Virgin…

16/08/2016 1 Comment

Simplification at scale

On Friday we published The Simplification Mantra. It discussed the starting perspectives for simplification and that OSS already have so much functionality that they're difficult for users to navigate. An example that I see time and again is where OSS can achieve a requirement, let's say designing a service for one customer, but don't cater for delivering the functionality at scale (ie designing services for hundreds…

15/08/2016 No Comments

Crescendo Partners demands sale of Redknee Solutions

Crescendo Partners Sends Letter to Redknee Solutions Inc. Board of Directors. Crescendo Partners today announced that it has delivered a letter to the Board of Directors of Redknee Solutions Inc. In the letter, Crescendo Partners urges the Board to immediately commence a broad sale process for the entire Company. Crescendo believes that numerous potential buyers would be interested in acquiring Redknee because of its strong brand…

14/08/2016 No Comments

The simplification mantra

When it comes to designing, building and configuring OSS, there is a tendency to have a functionality delivery mindset. That is, if we can get our OSS to meet each functional requirement then we tick the box and move on to the next. There is usually a long list of requirements that need to be ticked off, so we don't have time to go through the…

12/08/2016 No Comments

Redknee wins VoLTE Tier 1 upgrade in Europe

Redknee Wins VoLTE Upgrade With Tier 1 Operator in Europe. Redknee Solutions Inc. announced that it has won a multi-million dollar contract to upgrade a major Tier 1 communication service provider (CSP) in Europe to the latest release of the Redknee Unified Application Server, part of Redknee’s monetization and subscriber management suite. Redknee Unified is deployed in the CSP’s virtualized data center and supports more than…