Passionate About OSS Blog | Passionate About OSS and BSS

Getting A/B comparisons running automatically in the minds of all your OSS evaluators

Are you familiar with David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) and Jason Fried, the Co-Founders of 37signals (Makers of Basecamp and other software solutions)? As far as I know, they've never had anything to do with telco OSS tools, but I do love the clarity of a lot of the concepts they share on the 37signals blog and in their books like, "Rework" (which makes it into my…

06/06/2024 No Comments

Steve Jobs Said 1 Habit Separates the Doers From the Dreamers

This article by Jeff Haden in Inc Magazine, "30 Years Ago, Steve Jobs Said 1 Habit Separates the Doers From the Dreamers," has made me re-think the way I work, but also reconsider the way the OSS / telco industry works. "One of my least favorite things to do is ask for help. Not only do I not like to ask, but I take a somewhat…

29/05/2024 No Comments

What types of training does the OSS / telco industry need? What do you need?

I’d love to get your perspective on something. In recent times, quite a few people have reached out to suggest that PAOSS should create a comprehensive OSS/BSS training programme because there’s nothing really suited to their needs available on the market today. A couple of these people have suggested that the TM Forum courses are the best, but (rightly) focus on TM Forum assets like ODA,…

23/05/2024 No Comments

Listening to the Customer: How can we create more value for you?

We've just started an exciting new project in the last couple of weeks and have had some great workshops with the client's exec & project teams. This client has an ambitious target of multiplying their revenues several-fold over the next few years. The systems transformation we're planning will be a fundamental building block to help with achieving those goals. So much so that it's probably impossible…

15/05/2024 No Comments

Network Operations Ninja Academy (NONA) of the Future

We were honoured to be guests on the Zero-Touch Telecom (ZTT) show last week. The discussion mainly revolved around a highly problematic skills gap that’s likely to widen between network masters and apprentices once we introduce significant automation via tools such as AIOps and the like. In response, Michael P. asked a great question, "With the shift towards automation, what are some innovative ways we can cultivate…

06/05/2024 No Comments

Sharing a chat from the Zero-Touch Telecom show

Are you as fascinated with automation, AIOps, zero-touch networking, autonomous networking and the like? If so, you might like to listen in on a chat I had with Geoff Hollingworth of Rakuten Symphony on the "Zero-Touch Telecom Show" In it, we talked about some of the concepts from recent content here on PAOSS including: The 12 dilemmas we face on the journey to zero-touch operations A…

03/05/2024 No Comments

12 dilemmas that we face on the journey to zero-touch operations

There's a common misnomer that AIOps and Network Automation solutions are just stood up and a bunch of people are stood down. That is, as soon as the tools become operational, the network operator can start reducing head-count. Project sponsors pray for it (to justify their business cases), network operations staff fear it (for the impact it could have on their careers). However, the reality is…

30/04/2024 2 Comments

9 rainmaker techniques that help to deliver OSS/BSS transformations

If you're a technologist (eg enterprise architect, developer, BA, tech PM, CTO, etc) who has been tasked with implementing significant technological and business transformation in a company accustomed to stasis or incremental changes, effective persuasion is crucial. We've spoken previously about the importance of rainmakers, how they're the real heroes behind OSS-led transformations. As described in the article link above, my perspective on rainmakers has drastically…

23/04/2024 1 Comment

Future Scenario Planning: The “Open Tech Frontiers” Scenario (part 4)

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…

22/04/2024 No Comments

The OSS Golf Analogy

Over the years, I've often referred to The Corkscrew Analogy or Momentum Spiral to describe a mindset of incremental improvement that's needed to keep an OSS project moving forward. Rather than trying to jump straight from scratch (blue dot) to perfection / completion (yellow dot), it's far more helpful to make many smaller steps and iterate. For example, rather than trying to write the perfect system…

11/04/2024 No Comments

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

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

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