"If you are a product company and you only have one customer, then you effectively have a boss." Given that even the biggest OSS product companies only have a few customers, there is a tendency for the customers to be matrix bosses. To be in more control of your own destiny, you need to have a large number of customers, with no reliance on any one…
Read More »"...our research suggests that as many as 45 percent of the activities individuals are paid to perform can be automated by adapting currently demonstrated technologies. In the United States, these activities represent about $2 trillion in annual wages. Although we often think of automation primarily affecting low-skill, low-wage roles, we discovered that even the highest-paid occupations in the economy, such as financial managers, physicians, and senior…
Read More »As someone who is afforded the privilege of seeing many OSS when evaluating vendors, it strikes me that most OSS are designed by Engineers. It seems to me that if a developer hits on a user interface (UI) that can perform the required function then that interface layout will do. After all, Engineers in the OSS industry tend to have too many other tasks in their…
Read More »What does your OSS mean to your business (or your customer's business if you're a vendor / installer)? In the upper echelons of the business, OSS are often seen as being a significant financial burden but a necessary evil, a means to an end (or any other negative cliché you'd like to throw in). But how do you start to change that perception? How do you turn your…
Read More »"Which 10 technologies do we need that haven't been invented yet?" In no particular order: Automated checking and correlation of outside plant (and any other data source that doesn't have programmable interfaces) Order to cash tools for customers of CSPs, not just for the CSPs in the usual use of this metric Knowledge transfer between individuals that is faster than years of training and experience No-reconciliation…
Read More »"Which 10 nascent technologies will impact and be impacted by OSS in the future?" Cloud delivery and related services models that allow carriers to reduce their OSS CAPEX load and outsource aspects of operations. The other important aspect of cloud delivery is web-scaling of infrastructure for efficient, but resilient OSS platform architectures Network virtualization for on-demand resource allocation and associated reductions in power use by CSPs,…
Read More »"3.Our thinking is often constrained by the complexity of the challenges, so which 10 complexities would you like to snap your fingers and remove?" Here are ten ideas: Don't let Engineers define the requirements :) (I have an Engineering degree, so perhaps I'm included in this list). Just because you CAN deliver a feature doesn't mean it is effective to deliver it. If in doubt, leave…
Read More »James Altucher's Idea Machine concept will form the basis of a series of upcoming posts. An earlier post, "Just 10 ideas" posed 10 questions, one being "What are the 10 things that you’d like to get better at?" From that question, and each of the other questions, I'll attempt to generate 10 ideas. So, the 10 things I'd like to get better at are: Inspiring others…
Read More »Ruthless simplification is a common theme here on PAOSS. Here's a concept for you to try - a "simplification index" or "subtraction index" to classify how much simpler your OSS projects make your operations. The concept forces business cases to have subtraction projects built in.
Read More »Yesterday I posed 10 questions, including the following, "What should be the first 10 events scheduled at an OSS Olympics?" This is a concept I've pondered for years - who are the best of the best in the world of OSS? It's a tough one to determine though because one operator may be brilliant on one platform, but a mere amateur when given an unfamiliar platform to…
Read More »In yesterday's post, "Just 10 ideas", I talked about James Altucher's "Idea Machine," of coming up with 10 ideas every day, regardless of whether they're good or not. I took a slightly different twist on the concept and posed a series of 10 questions, which in turn will probably have at least 10 idea responses. That's 100 OSS ideas. Today's post lists another 10 questions to…
Read More »Suddenlink Communications Leverages NetCracker’s Managed Services to Improve Business Agility. NetCracker Technology announced that Suddenlink Communications, one of the largest cable broadband services providers in the United States, has expanded its partnership with NetCracker by engaging in a multi-year managed services program. As part of this initiative, NetCracker will deliver its cutting-edge CRM solution to Suddenlink via a fully hosted managed service model with industry-leading SLAs.…
Read More »"You can’t trust the old style of thinking anymore. You have to come up with a new way of thinking. A new way of having ideas. A new way of interacting with the outside universe." James Altucher. I'm currently reading James Altucher's latest book. It has nothing to do with OSS but it has a myriad of ideas to ponder for OSS exponents. He speaks about…
Read More »"This Industry Will Be Won & Lost In the Next Three Years" John Chambers on Light Reading. Many of you will have noticed the recent partnership between Ericsson and Cisco. You will probably have noticed that they're talking of partnership rather than merger due to the speed in which they can move. As they rightly point out, a merger could take years to play out, years…
Read More »Cisco Packages Moogsoft's Incident.MOOG With Its Virtual Managed Services (VMS) Software for Service Providers and Adds Incident.MOOG to the Cisco General Price List. Moogsoft, announced that Cisco's Cloud and Virtualization Group will offer its Incident.MOOG service quality and productivity improvement software to MSPs, telco service providers, and cloud-driven enterprises. The global agreement allows Cisco to resell Incident.MOOG generally, as well as package it specifically for its…
Read More »"With an ecosystem of more than 1,000 channel partners and revenue from its IoT and telematics solutions totaling $495 million year-to-date, Verizon is generating one of the largest amounts of revenue from the Internet of Things of any company in the U.S." This issue of Pipeline. Noting that telcos have been offering telemetry services for years and have long-standing contracts that I'm sure Verizon is including…
Read More »CSG Selected for BSS Transformation at Angola Telecom. CSG International (NASDAQ: CSGS) announced that CSG’s partner, Satec, will deploy the company’s award-winning Revenue Management solutions at Angola Telecom. The contract comes on the heels of the successful pilot deployment of CSG Interconnect for Angola Telecom’s wholesale operations. The integrated solution will include CSG Singleview® Convergent Rating & Billing, Singleview Customer Management, and Intermediate™, as well as…
Read More »"A need to differentiate products and services in the market is forcing greater specialisation. Specialist organisations that do one or two things well will naturally rely more on partnerships. At the same time, other companies have little time to both develop similar expertise internally and keep pace with technology-driven changes in their own industry or neighbouring industries they might be moving into. The confluence of these…
Read More »PCCW Global Selects CENX to Orchestrate Self-Serve On-Demand VPN and Cloud Services. CENX announced that PCCW Global has selected CENX’s Cortx Service Orchestrator to enhance elements in its VPN and cloud offerings that will facilitate self-serve, on-demand connectivity. Using an on-line portal, integrated to PCCW Global’s OSS and BSS environments, customers can dynamically scale their bandwidth connectivity and cloud data center resources. Cortx Service Orchestrator helps…
Read More »“2016 will be a pivotal year for companies adapting to digitally savvy and empowered customers. Companies moving along the age of the customer path will begin to thrive, while laggards will begin the slow descent to failure.” Dane Anderson, in a new report from Forrester Research. The report also highlights the following trends for 2016: Digital marketers will embrace eCommerce initiatives as core responsibilities Mobile innovations…
Read More »Whether you have a simple residential telco service or have a large organisation with a correspondingly large managed services contract, it's most likely that the CSP's contact centre staff are the front-line responders to any queries or concerns you have. In many cases, they're the only staff that are responding. In the modern era of social media, these contact centre staff are arguably more influential on…
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