In yesterday's post, we discussed how building a story around the resolution of customer problems is a way to attract customers to your solution, yet few in the OSS industry seem to go about it this way. To build this story though, you have to understand your customers. For example: What functionality of yours do they use What processes do they run using your tools? Is…
Read More »"Competence: If you build it, they will come." John C Maxwell. Interesting concept that. There's another saying... "Know you, like you, trust you." [actually it's, "All things being equal, people will do business with — and refer business to— those people they know, like and trust," by Bob Burg, but I simplify it]. You may be competent, but if they don't know you, how will they…
Read More »Enghouse Systems Acquires NetBoss Technologies. Enghouse Systems Limited announced it has acquired the assets of NetBoss Technologies, Inc. for a purchase price of approximately CDN $9.3 million, subject to certain price adjustments. Headquartered in Sebastian, Florida, NetBoss provides an integrated service assurance platform encompassing fault and performance management, service correlation and customer analytics. Built on modern, scalable architecture, the platform performs comprehensive fault analysis through auto-discovery…
Read More »Microsoft and Facebook to build an innovative new subsea cable across the Atlantic Ocean. Microsoft and Facebook announced an agreement to build a new, state-of-the-art subsea cable across the Atlantic. The new "MAREA" cable will help meet the growing customer demand for high speed, reliable connections for cloud and online services for Microsoft, Facebook and their customers. The parties have cleared conditions to go Contract-In-Force (CIF) with…
Read More »Comptel has received a significant order from Qatari customer. Comptel has received a significant order from Qatari customer belonging to global operator group for FlowOne Fulfillment licenses and related services. The deal is a continuation and expansion of technology collaboration between the companies. The value of the deal is approximately 1.8 million euros.
Read More »Redknee Wins a Multi-Year Services Contract with Ukrainian Mobile Operator lifecell Redknee Solutions Inc. announced the signing of a new multi-year services agreement with lifecell, one of the largest operators in Ukraine and part of the Turkcell Group. The contract strengthens Redknee’s partnership with lifecell, allowing the operator to leverage Redknee’s monetization and subscriber management platform to quickly launch new and innovative products and services while…
Read More »The jungle drums continue to beat - does OSS have a future? I keep hearing people discussing its imminent demise. OSS can have many issues and the term OSS possibly doesn't have the greatest name in all circles because of these issues. But I can't go past the fact that even if the term OSS, as we know it today, completely disappears we will still need…
Read More »There's a constant dilemma underway for those pondering OSS: Do we try to gather every conceivable piece of data that we can and put up with the costs, time and effort to do so Or do we keep just the Minimum Viable Data (MVD), minimising curation, but missing out on the details that might drive efficiencies or insights In general, OSS implementers tend to have the…
Read More »“For the person trying to do everything alone, the game really is over. If you want to do something big, you must link up with others. One is too small a number to achieve greatness. That’s the Law of Significance.” John C Maxwell. In the past, national telcos have been able to achieve greatness alone (well in massive numbers of employees, but all under the one…
Read More »du selects Ericsson as IT managed services partner. Ericsson and du, a telecommunications operator based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, have agreed a new long-term partnership in which Ericsson will manage and operate du's IT infrastructure. Ericsson will deploy its global tools, processes and ways of working on an end-to-end basis to improve du's infrastructure performance and support high-quality customer experiences. Ericsson will manage du's IT…
Read More »The diagram below shows what is known as The Whale Curve. It shows a graph of the relative profitability of each product in your product mix. From the book, "Waging War on Complexity Costs," by Steven A Wilson and Andrei Perumal. You might be wondering how a profitability graph could ever peak at over 100%. After all, a company can only ever have a profitability of…
Read More »If you were to define just one trait that every person in OSS must unquestionably have, what would it be? There are so many to choose from: Ability to work in a team - projects tend to be too broad for any one person to specify, design, implement, hand over and maintain Flexibility - it's a bit like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates. You're never sure…
Read More »I was recently asked how I would go about building up an OSS from scratch. To be honest, I didn't do a great job of explaining it at the time despite having done it at four tier-1 carriers in the past. Well, not exactly from scratch, as each of these carriers had operated from NMS for years but had never had OSS. They had existing organisation…
Read More »CENX Awarded Tier 1 EMEA Service Provider Contract. CENX announced the company has been selected by a Tier 1 global communications service provider, with headquarters in southern Europe, to orchestrate and assure on-demand cloud and data center services. CENX's Exanova Service Intelligence (http://cenx.com/products/exanova-service-intelligence-for-sdn-nfv/) software will enable on-demand deployment and real-time assurance of innovative services for the service provider's international enterprise and wholesale carrier customers. Initial services…
Read More »I've been lucky enough to have mentored and spoken with quite a few people taking the first few steps on their career journeys. I find it interesting that many new grads focus on getting a role or internship with the big name corporations. You know the ones. At the time, I was shattered upon falling at the last round of interviews to enter the graduate program…
Read More »Ooredoo Maldives Selects Alepo’s Fixed Broadband Charging and Customer Care Solution for the Introduction of Next-Generation Fixed Broadband Services. Alepo announced that Ooredoo Maldives has selected Alepo to provide a fixed broadband(FBB) charging and customer care solution for its nationwide fixed broadband network. In the Maldives, Ooredoo has established itself as the market leader in the mobile broadband sector and recently piloted new mobile money services…
Read More »I was just rummaging around here on PAOSS looking for an old post that I wrote giving a high-level description on NETCONF and YANG... only to find that I hadn't written a a high-level description on NETCONF and YANG yet. I could've sworn that I'd written something a year or two ago but apparently I hadn't. Anyway, here's the article I didn't write two years ago...…
Read More »Indonesia's Biznet Selects Amdocs Software to Support its Business Growth. Amdocs announced that Biznet, Indonesia’s leading fiber-optic operator and provider of Internet and Cable TV services and a new Amdocs customer, has selected Amdocs to provide a comprehensive customer care and billing solution in support of its growth plans and to deliver a premier customer service. "In order to support our ambitious growth plans, we needed…
Read More »General Communication, Inc. (GCI), the leading communications service provider in Alaska, has selected Netcracker. Netcracker Technology announced that General Communication, Inc. (GCI), the leading communications service provider in Alaska, has selected Netcracker to enable its Polaris Program, which is the transformation of GCI’s customer, revenue and operations management systems. These new capabilities will deliver a better customer experience, reduce operational costs through managed services and greater…
Read More »"...the program "The Brain," in which Dr David Eagleman, neuroscientist, NYT bestselling author and Guggenheim Fellow shared a fascinating but little known secret…our brains are specifically designed so that we learn on the job – by doing. Dr Eagleman explained that this is why human babies do not have anywhere near the survival skills possessed by animal babies. While a giraffe calf can stand and walk…
Read More »OSS regression testing, for those not already familiar with the term, is to re-run old tests to ensure existing functionality in your OSS doesn't get broken by new code releases. With agile development methodologies becoming more widespread and regular, smaller releases occurring it's important to have a robust regression testing regime in place. There are a number of tools on the market that make automated regression…
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