Passionate About OSS Blog | Passionate About OSS and BSS

Managing network abundance

"Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into." Wayne Dyer. Have you noticed that in many developed countries, CSP services have recently flipped from scarcity to abundance situations? Bandwidth, storage, compute, applications, content, etc all saw premiums in the past because demand outweighed restrictions in supply. But in recent times, this has flipped to an over-supply of associated products / services. And…

08/09/2015 No Comments

Practice adding value to people

"As you move higher and higher in the world of success, more and more of your job becomes "people development." Ask, "What can I do to 'add value' to my subordinates [ed: or peers]? What can I do to help them become more effective?" Remember, to bring out the best in a person, you must first visualise his best." David Schwartz, in "The Magic of Thinking…

07/09/2015 No Comments

Just one more bucket

"Many drops make a bucket, many buckets make a pond, many ponds make a lake, and many lakes make an ocean." Percy Ross. One of the big OSS challenges for vendors and customers alike is version management. Let's say Customer X installs version 1.5.3 of Vendor Y's exciting new resource management software. This software is a central component of Customer X's best-of-breed OSS suite and there…

04/09/2015 4 Comments

Only the Swedes can change Sweden

"Changing IBM is like trying to change Sweden, and it would require diplomatic and bureaucratic work." Edward Tufte. Interesting analogy from Edward Tufte. Give or take, IBM consists of around 400,000 employees globally (FWIW. Sweden has a population of around 9.5 million people). That's a lot of people to persuade towards a future mode of operation, so Edward's comment on Twitter is valid. But funnily enough,…

03/09/2015 No Comments

C-Ports – Docker Containers Across Multiple Clouds

"C-Ports (pronounced seaports), as we call it, has already been demonstrated to effectively deploy containers across 5 clouds (Bluemix, Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, Chameleon , and FutureSystems and 2 clusters (one at IBM and another at Rutgers University) in order to create a dynamic federation. Additionally, C-Ports is not tied to a specific container scheduler, i.e., it can work with any local container scheduler, such as…

02/09/2015 No Comments

Ericsson signs with Cisco and Tektronix

Ericsson signs OSSii license agreements with Cisco and NETSCOUT's Tektronix Communications. Ericsson has signed license agreements with both Cisco Systems and Tektronix Communications (a wholly owned subsidiary of NETSCOUT SYSTEMS, INC), under which Ericsson will license its OSS interfaces for integration with Cisco self-optimizing network (SON) products and Tektronix Communications TrueCall® geoanalytics platform. The agreement is in alignment with the principles outlined in the OSS Interoperability…

02/09/2015 No Comments

Mobile OSS/BSS Commerce

"...numbers from comScore showing that while 60 percent of retail browsing happens on mobile devices, those devices only account for 15 percent of dollars spent. “The experiences on mobile haven’t caught up with the consumer demand,” he said. “The consumer is ready to do commerce on mobile.”" Anthony Ha here on TechCrunch. These fascinating stats pose the questions: Do customers prefer to buy from PC or…

01/09/2015 No Comments

Self-serve building blocks

"It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be." Isaac Asimov. Last week I brought some of Tom Nolle's ideas to your attention in a blog about building blocks. The benefits of this ambitious,…

31/08/2015 No Comments

Walk-throughs at the speed of sound

"All the scientist creates in a fact is the language in which he enunciates it. If he predicts a fact, he will employ this language, and for all those who can speak and understand it, his prediction is free from ambiguity.." Henri Poincaré. As an OSS consultant, I succeed or fail partly on my ability to create strategies, concepts and plans, but more importantly on my…

28/08/2015 No Comments

NEC and NetCracker expand Maxcom’s End-to-End OSS footprint

NEC and NetCracker Deliver Additional Solutions to Expand Maxcom’s End-to-End OSS Footprint. NEC Corporation, NetCracker Technology and NEC México announced that Maxcom, an integrated, quad-play communications provider in Mexico, has selected them to deliver additional NetCracker OSS solutions that will improve business agility, infrastructure deployment as well as inventory and network synchronization. Maxcom provides high-speed Internet, voice and pay-TV services to residential and business customers in…

28/08/2015 No Comments

If you don’t understand me, it’s my fault

"If I don't understand you, it's your fault. This has to be the most basic, fundamental principle of a good software architect (well, of any engineer), but most of the architects I've met so far, in many companies, don't seem to believe in it. They don't understand that the job of a software architect is to make complex things simple, not the other way around. They…

27/08/2015 No Comments

Compounding carrier complexity

"The challenge is that complexity is beguiling. Clever tricks and hacks can add to a company’s story and the benefit vs complexity trade off for each one can be well worth it. The problem comes over time when new tricks are added to the old ones to keep the story fresh. The complexity builds up all the time whilst the story only gets incrementally better because…

26/08/2015 No Comments

Compounding complexity

"Much better to avoid complexity altogether, or rather only accept it when the benefit vs complexity trade off is hugely compelling. Hence I say it’s best to maintain an irrational bias against complexity and keep it simple. This is a lesson I’ve learnt before and now I’m learning again. I’m hoping that writing it down will help me remember it better this time." Nic Brisbourne. The…

25/08/2015 No Comments

Get out of your own head and get into theirs

"Oracle wanted Maxymiser because of a big trend going on at big companies. Chief Marketing Officers now command huge budgets for tech and software. By 2017, CMOs are expected to outspend CTOs on tech, so software companies like Oracle, Salesforce, Adobe are going after this market with a vengeance." Julie Bort on Business Insider. How many of you have built an OSS that has been sponsored…

24/08/2015 No Comments

BT engages Cloudera

BT Calls on Cloudera to Accelerate Data Velocity and Fast-track New Customer Offerings. Cloudera, the leader in enterprise analytic data management powered by Apache Hadoop™, announced that British Telecom (BT), one of the largest telecommunications providers in the world, has implemented a Cloudera-powered enterprise data hub (EDH) to accelerate date velocity and bring more value to its customers. In its legacy environment, BT’s business customer records…

22/08/2015 No Comments

Accenture launches advanced analytics for telco

Accenture Launches Advanced Analytics Applications for the Telecommunications Industry. Accenture is launching five advanced analytics applications for the telecommunications industry, equipping users with customized analytics insights that can empower them to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Developed through the Accenture Analytics Applications Platform – a scalable platform that develops industry- and function-specific advanced analytics applications that are reusable, configurable and adaptable to meet the needs of each unique…

22/08/2015 No Comments

If it’s small and reversible….

"If it's small and reversible then it's an experiment. If not, it's a commitment." Author unknown but revered. With our traditional, monolithic OSS there don't tend to be many changes that are small and reversible unless you are controlling the code and its development. We always seem to do things on a grand scale! We spoke recently about how data does readily allow for experimentation. We've…

21/08/2015 No Comments

Huawei and Red Hat integrate for NFV

Huawei and Red Hat successfully complete agile integration tests for multiple vendors to accelerate NFV development. Huawei and Red Hat announced that they have completed the first phase of agilely integrating multiple vendors' MBB architectures by adopting Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) technologies. As part of this partnership, Huawei and Red Hat have successfully conducted high performance LTE tests in heavy-traffic scenarios in NFV/Software-defined networking (SDN) Open…

21/08/2015 No Comments

Seeding supply or demand?

"My other observation is that in most cases one side of the [supply and demand] marketplace comes much more easily than the other. On Lexoo supply comes more easily whereas on Appear Here, a marketplace for short term lets on the High Street demand is the easier side. The trick then is to build the easy side to make the marketplace super attractive for the more…

20/08/2015 No Comments

The granularity of intent

"This Network Intent Composition project will enable the controller to manage and direct network services and network resources based on describing the “Intent” for network behaviors and network policies. Intents are described to the controller through a new NorthBound Interface, which provides generalized and abstracted policy semantics instead of Openflow-like flow rules. The Intent based NBI allows for a descriptive way to get what is desired…

19/08/2015 No Comments

Minimum Viable Path (MVP)

"...the more data you cross-link into a chain, the more likely you are to have broken chains." The diagram above provides a visual perspective on yesterday's blog. Circuit Level 1 shows the minimum data that allows the service activation to occur (although it relies on all of the infrastructure to be set up prior). The downside is that there isn't much information available for assurance purposes.…

18/08/2015 2 Comments

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