"Essentially, RFPs [Request for Proposal] by their very nature are already flawed. You have described the situation you are in today and you are trying to fit the new technology to that situation. Assuming you are trying to transform your business, this is a dead end before you even start." Paul Vedam in his article on Telco Professionals called "RFP technology selection: the good, the bad…
Read More »"The engineering bias blinds people to this simple fact. The conventional thinking is that great products sell themselves; if you have great product, it will inevitably reach consumers. But nothing is further from the truth." Peter Thiel (actually a notes essay from Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup - Class 9 lecture). Distribution is one of an OSS vendor's biggest challenges with current OSS customer-base thinking. Customers are…
Read More »"Ask your friends what business Google is in and the answer you’ll most likely get is “search.” And they would be wrong. Google is, first and foremost, an advertising company. A full 97 percent of its revenue comes from advertising on its various properties, including YouTube, plus partner sites through its AdSense product. Sure, Google has Android and Chrome OS and everything else, but it doesn’t…
Read More »MTN group selects Ericsson Order to Cash Suite. MTN, a leading telecommunications company with presence in 22 countries in Africa and the Middle East, signed a multi-year agreement with Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) to implement, support and manage Ericsson's Order to Cash suite. This solution enables MTN to standardize the customer experience of its products and services in all the markets it is operational. As part of…
Read More »Sterlite Technologies announces acquisition of global telecom software company Elitecore Technologies. Sterlite Technologies Limited (“Sterlite”) has entered into a definitive agreement for the acquisition of Elitecore Technologies Private Limited (“Elitecore”), a global telecom software product company. Elitecore is a leading provider of Operations Support Services / Business Support Services and is majority owned by First Carlyle Ventures Mauritius, whose affiliate is advised by The Carlyle Group.…
Read More »Another set of quotes from Peter Thiel below (actually a notes essay from Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup - Class 4 lecture): "For a company to own its market, it must have some combination of brand, scale cost advantages, network effects, or proprietary technology" "Brand is a tricky concept for investors to understand and identify in advance. But what’s understood is that if you manage to build…
Read More »ZTEsoft partners with KPN to realize OSS transformation. KPN and ZTEsoft (a subsidiary of ZTE Corporation) announced they have signed an IT framework agreement that extends their strategic partnership into the operational support systems (OSS) domain for KPN’s operations in the Netherlands. KPN and ZTE have been jointly preparing for this transformative programme with the goal to simplify KPN’s OSS processes and IT landscape, ultimately speeding…
Read More »M1 Transforms its Billing and Customer Care System in Collaboration with Accenture. M1 Limited (M1), in collaboration with Accenture (NYSE:ACN), has completed a major upgrade of its billing and customer care system. The upgraded system enables M1 to meet the current and future needs of its growing customer base, and provides M1 with a comprehensive, unified view of all customers across its business lines. “Accenture helped…
Read More »"The PayPal network, as it’s been called, is a set of friendships built over the course of a decade. It has become a sort of franchise. But this isn’t unique; that kind of dynamic arguably characterizes all great tech companies, i.e. last mover monopolies. Last movers build non-commoditized businesses. They are relationship-driven. They create value. They last. And they make money." Peter Thiel (actually a notes…
Read More »"I think the data modeling associated with NFV is absolutely critical for its success. Sadly, few of the players involved in NFV say much about their approach to the models..." Tom Nolle in another great blog called, "Comparing the NFV Data-Model Strategies of Key Vendors." Tom's blog above articulates something that I've always found slightly amusing. New networking technologies always seem to focus on the parts…
Read More »"If you embrace special orders, you're doing something difficult, scarce and worth seeking out." Seth Godin here. Recent post, "Long Tail Dynamics in OSS," highlighted the different bands of customers that a CSP services and the different OSS that they use to service each band. The head (the top-X customers by revenue) tends to get customised OSS solutions, whilst the long tail (the other customers, many…
Read More »"Show me your bookcase, the ideas that you've collected one by one over the years, the changes you've made in the way you see the world. Not your browser history, but the books you were willing to buy and hold and read and store and share. Every bookshelf tells a story. You can't build one in a day or even a week... it's a lifetime of…
Read More »CableSouth Media3 Extends and Expands BSS Engagement with NetCracker. NetCracker Technology announced that it has extended and expanded its partnership with CableSouth Media3. NetCracker will continue to support CableSouth Media3’s use of the NetCracker Customer and Revenue Management solution through a hosted managed services model and implement a cutting-edge customer Web self-care application. CableSouth Media3 is a leading cable operator in the United States, delivering triple-play…
Read More »The diagram above shows the head and the long tail of OSS, but also the tale of two distinct ways of thinking at some Tier-1 CSPs. The yellow band represents the head, the top-X (eg Top 100) customers, generally the major corporates, government, etc that spend massive amounts on communication services and expect a corresponding amount of attention from the CSP, usually in the form of managed…
Read More »When I was at uni, there was a stall that had graffiti on the wall that was quite similar to the diagram above - words to the effect of "Arts degree - please take one." It showed the disdain that some students obviously felt for the worth of an arts degree. Back then, this sentiment was reflected in hiring policies of tech companies. But this interesting…
Read More »"By now, most people know who Google is and what Google does. Google serves billions of online users in this country and around the world … With little or no revenue from its users, Google still manages to turn a healthy profit by selling advertisements within its products that rely in substantial part on users’ personal identification information … in this model, the users are the…
Read More »Liberty Global Makes Strategic Investment in Guavus. Leading international cable company Liberty Global plc has made a strategic investment in Guavus, Inc., a provider of real-time big data analytics applications for operational intelligence. Built on the Guavus Reflex ® operational intelligence platform, Guavus products allow cable operators to gain a holistic, cohesive view of network state and business context in real-time. It uniquely breaks down the…
Read More »Huawei launches OSS-as-a-Service to unleash full value of OSS. Huawei has launched its new service-driven offering - OSS-as-a-Service. OSS-as-a-Service is designed to maximize return-on-investment and operation efficiency, increase service agility and unleash the full value of Operation Support System (OSS) for Communications Service Providers (CSPs). OSS-as-a-Service is a mix of business & delivery models for OSS capabilities in a Multi-Year Service Relationship. CSPs can find OSS-as-a-Service…
Read More »Telefónica Announces Successful Proof of Concept for SDN/NFV with NEC and NetCracker. NEC Corporation, NetCracker Technology and Telefónica Business Solutions have successfully completed a Proof of Concept (PoC) based on SDN/NFV that allows Telefónica to accelerate its strategy to automate operations and provide a new agile WAN on the business market. Telefónica, which won the award for “Operator of the Year” in the category of network…
Read More »ZTEsoft Partners with Econet Wireless Burundi for Consolidated Network Billing. ZTEsoft, a leading provider of telecom software, solutions and services, has announced a deal with Econet Wireless Burundi, the largest mobile operator in Burundi with more than 2.7 million subscribers. This will see the deployment of ZSmart cvBS V8.0 (convergent billing system) to support Econet Burundi’s consolidated network with U-COM/Leo. Econet Wireless is a diversified telecommunications…
Read More »"SMSes and push notifications have eight times higher response rates from consumers compared to emails. Thus, sending relevant and targeted push notifications would not only have higher response rates for the brand but also improve the shopping experience for the customer." Nameet Potnis. It's been a bit of a "marketing" week here on PAOSS. The theme continues today. That number above is a big one -…
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