Last week we ran a series of blogs about what the OSS of the future is going to look like. It's going to be simple, not cluttered. It's going to provide answers, not just reams of information. It's going to allow operators to throw questions at it, in natural speech. It may even provide you with answers to questions you hadn't even thought to ask it.…
Read More »The picture you see below is of a coin minted by Roman Emperor Titus. It is the visualisation of the oxymoron of Festina Lente, or hasten slowly, where dolphins were known for their speed and the anchor for its stability. In terms of OSS, this is mirrored in the dichotomy of the speed of change versus the attention to detail and quality that they must produce.…
Read More »Here's a great article from Linux.com about container networks and network managers that our OSS will be interfacing with increasingly in the future.
Read More »Just thinking about yesterday's blog (about how OSS will become Whole of Business Support Systems and what impact that will have on the UI) when something quite simple dawned on me... In most cases, OSS should be designed to provide answers, not just information. But in most cases today, the opposite is true. We have user interfaces that show truckloads of information (as per the tongue-in-cheek…
Read More »In yesterday's blog, we discussed how the OSS of the future will not just be Operational support systems, instead being Whole of Business support systems (WOBSS?? :)). Anyway, we also discussed that to be relevant to the whole of business, our tools will need to provide: A context that is relevant to the operator (who might use the terminology of sales, contact centre, accounting, etc) because…
Read More »"So if an OSS is the glue that allows a modern digital business to communicate, derive cross-department insights and deliver operational efficiencies, does having the "Operational" in OSS actually constrain our thinking into what our tools can actually be... MUST actually be?" Friday's PAOSS post. So if the statement above is true, and we are to evangelise OSS as being able to add value beyond the…
Read More »Last week we discussed whether big OSS was losing relevance and our tools are just operational support systems (little oss). I firmly believe that the future for OSS, a future that already exists in some organisations, is for OSS to produce relevant insights and efficiency far beyond just operational teams. They need to be relevant to an organisations' business units that look after sales, marketing, products,…
Read More »"My initial reaction to the idea that continuous improvement begets enduring success was ‘makes sense, companies need to reinvent themselves if they want to stay on top for multiple decades and continuous improvement will do that for you’, but that underplays the importance of the point. An insatiable desire for everything to be the best it can be is key to getting to the top, not…
Read More »"Smart contracts are computer protocols that facilitate, verify, or enforce the negotiation or performance of a contract, or that make a contractual clause unnecessary. Smart contracts usually also have a user interface and often emulate the logic of contractual clauses. Proponents of smart contracts claim that many kinds of contractual clauses may thus be made partially or fully self-executing, self-enforcing, or both. Smart contracts aim to…
Read More »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…
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