Passionate About OSS Blog | Passionate About OSS and BSS

Future Scenario Planning: The “Regulated Innovation” Scenario (part 3)

We've embarked on a journey of trying to plan for the future of OSS/BSS, not by predicting the future, but by seeking ways to be ready for possible future situations by using Peter Schwartz's scenario planning technique. Using this technique, we've identified four possible future scenarios for telco based on two high-impact variables (tech growth and regulatory control) as well as high-impact certainties (geopolitical influence and…

10/04/2024 No Comments

Future Scenario Planning: Four Possible Scenarios (part 2)

As discussed in the previous article, "Future Scenario Planning: Have you given up on doing an OSS transformation? (part 1)" part of the fun of OSS/BSS transformation is trying to imagine the future environment, 5-10 years from now, when your transformed OSS/BSS is still servicing the needs of your future stakeholders. But what does that future look like? Nobody can truly predict the future. "No matter…

02/04/2024 No Comments

Future Scenario Planning: Have you given up on doing an OSS transformation? (part 1)

Earlier in the week, a friend mentioned he was reading "Alchemy" by Rory Sutherland. It's not an OSS book per se, but does provide some great examples for helping us think in original ways - a must-have skill for any OSS practitioner! "Alchemy" helps with some really lateral ways for re-framing problems. In one example, Sutherland points out that when considering improvements to the Channel Tunnel…

01/04/2024 2 Comments

The Telco DAO (TDAO): Does it represent the future of telco business models?

In recent articles, we've discussed how Private Equity (PE) could help to reshape the struggling telecommunications business models and how OSS/BSS stacks touch almost every part of a telco business model without most people even realising it (as per the diagram below). We've also discussed how the pragmatism of Tier-2 telco thinking could be a great starting point for designing the next-generation telco business model. Part…

25/03/2024 No Comments

The OSS/BSS-led playbook for Private Equity-based improvement of the telco industry

In recent years, we've seen a rise in traditional telecommunications providers selling off tranches of tower assets. These sell-offs have likely occurred for a variety of reasons - to help fund 5G roll-outs, to pay down debt, to invest in further digital transformation projects, etc. In short, capital demands / ambitions appear to often exceed the strong revenue streams that most telcos still maintain today. Brookfield…

20/03/2024 No Comments

No telco wants to buy an OSS/BSS

When you're a senior exec in a telco and you've been made responsible for allocating resources, it's unlikely that you ever think, "gee, we really should give our operations teams some new operations systems (OSS/BSS) to work with." It would be nice if they did, but that's just not what they're thinking about. For the senior leaders of most telcos, back-office operations are generally seen as…

18/03/2024 No Comments

An OSS Buyer’s Experience Journey – An Emotional Roller-coaster

I really liked this article from Guy Brunsdon called, "Using the Buyer’s Journey Model for Internal Alignment." It's certainly not written for the world of telco / OSS specifically, but it certainly resonated with some of the challenges we face. In Guy's article, he states: I’ve always liked the “Buyer’s Journey” model, which describes a customer’s journey from the “Unaware” (oblivious to your product/service) to “Advocacy”…

14/03/2024 No Comments

OSS Made by Engineers for Engineers

There's this phrase that just keeps ringing in my head when I see OSS and BSS in action - "Made by Engineers for Engineers." This was certainly a badge of honour. If the people who built OSS tools had network engineering experience, then there was a great likelihood that they were building solutions to solve real-world problems. Early OSS builders were scratching their own itch in…

12/03/2024 No Comments

Our next deep-dive report: Igniting the OSS Revolution

If you're a regular reader of the PAOSS blog, you might have noticed that we’ve been generating at least one deep-dive tech report per year. Last year it was AIOps of the Future, the year before it was The Most Exciting OSS/BSS Innovations, and Inventory of the Future, etc. We've loved using these freely downloadable reports to shine a light on the amazing things being done in…

05/03/2024 No Comments

Will AIOps widen a highly problematic skills-gap between network masters and apprentices?

In recent years, we've been trying to generate at least one deep-dive tech report per year here at PAOSS. Last year it was AIOps of the Future, the year before it was The Most Exciting OSS/BSS Innovations, etc. They tend to be an itch that we want to scratch for ourselves, but they've had an awesome side-benefit. Some really big names have reached out and asked…

29/02/2024 No Comments

Technology proliferation: Navigating across the OSS savannah

Back in my early days of OSS, I knew there was soooo much to learn. As the signpost below suggests, as well as the OSS applications themselves, there were also adjacent / related fields like databases, networks, services, architecture, programming, and so much more. Pretty daunting! But after a few years in the industry, I began to get a feel for the "lay of the land."…

27/02/2024 No Comments

$500M at the speed of trust – One big difference between Warren Buffett and the OSS industry

We've recently been talking about the chasm between OSS buyers and sellers. OSS buyers and sellers desperately need each other to improve the effectiveness of the entire telecommunications industry. The size of the chasm is harming both sides. In part 2 of the "buyer-seller chasm" series, three of the biggest contributing factors were identified as: Trust Risk Confidence / Skill-set gap We're going to really drill…

20/02/2024 No Comments

When OSS architects meet the midwit meme

Have you ever tried to be one of the cool kids and have felt that eerie feeling that you're going to get shown up for not actually being cool? In the business world we call it imposter syndrome.... but I'm already giving off strong hints about being completely uncool aren't I? ...But let's push on anyway. I stumbled across the concept of the midwit meme whilst…

14/02/2024 2 Comments

Avoiding the “Three-Forevers” approach to vendor selection

So you're about to embark on an OSS transformation project huh? One that involves finding the best-fit solution from the hundreds of OSS/BSS that are available on the market. You've already thought long and hard about the build vs buy conundrum and decided that rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, you'll go with the speed and "simplicity" of using an off-the-shelf solution. But now the…

08/02/2024 No Comments

Being fired, the blessing in disguise

I've only been fired once. This might sound like a gloomy topic but it's closely tied into the Passionate About OSS origin story, so I definitely look back on it with fondness now, over a decade later. I was CTO of a consulting company, but contracted out to another company in a Program Director role. The total value of the project I was responsible for was…

06/02/2024 No Comments

How a Lego challenge helps provide a new lens on OSS

Did you love to play with Lego as a kid? I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that since you're reading a blog about OSS, then you're probably leaning towards the technical end of the spectrum... and therefore probably did play with Lego. Perhaps you even crossed into Lego Technic that allows even more technical builds? Before I take you on the journey…

01/02/2024 No Comments

The Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) cliff facing the telco and OSS/BSS Industries

In recent times, we've seen widespread damage caused by cybersecurity events impacting the telecommunications industry. Unfortunately, we're rapidly approaching another monumental cliff for security of telecommunications (and all the industries that rely on electronic communications). The same cliff is something the OSS/BSS industry also needs to be patently aware of. Traditional cryptographic algorithms, which underpin the security in the telecommunications sector, communications over the Internet and…

30/01/2024 No Comments

The rise of the super-ISP and a whole-quilt OSS solution

The early 2000s (when I first started out in, and fell in love with, the OSS industry) saw many Tier-1 telcos make large OSS and BSS transformation investments. Prior to that, they'd largely run their operations from NMS level and/or using home-grown systems. Since there weren't many existing OSS to unseat, these projects were mostly greenfields transformations, where monolithic OSS solutions could be built on top…

25/01/2024 No Comments

Similarities and differences between airlines and telco industries

The airline industry is comprised of many regional carriers. There is no global carrier (although there are alliances). Each continent has multiple airlines. There are also local / regional airlines. Airlines of different sizes, business models and target customers. Different service offerings and different look & feel in terms of the customer experience (CX). This shares quite a few similarities with the telco industry, where there…

23/01/2024 No Comments

An OSS design principle I need your guidance on

I find that writing these blog articles is a fantastic way of assembling a variety of ideas and distilling them into coherent stories / concepts (well, hopefully they're coherent). I always welcome feedback and corrections because it helps to round out my understanding of concepts relating to OSS. Feedback from you, dear readers, is highly valued. In this article, I'm even more in need of your…

16/01/2024 No Comments

What will you do if the telco industry dies?

Christel Heydemann, Orange’s CEO, brought to our attention at MWC 2023 that a survey of European telcos indicated that almost half of the polled CEOs do not expect their businesses to make it through another decade. That's a pretty scary thing to think about if you've built your career around the telco industry and don't have a lot of exposure to other industries isn't it? I…

10/01/2024 No Comments

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