"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,…
Read More »"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…
Read More »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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »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…
Read More »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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »"...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.…
Read More »"Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it." Salvador Dali. The heading for today's blog sounds ridiculous doesn't it? How could the pursuit of perfection be detrimental to my customers (and many organisations in OSS that have not been my customers yet)? It's not so much the pursuit of perfection, but the expectation of perfection that causes all the problems. As Engineers and problem…
Read More »OSS/BSS Market Being Reshaped With Emergence of Convergent Billing Systems, to Post 12.7% CAGR From 2014-2020: Transparency Market Research. As companies pump investments into customer service platforms, OSS/BSS will lay claim to a sizeable chunk of these investments, helping the global OSS/BSS market to be worth US$ 49.78 billion by 2020. This is one of the key findings of Transparency Market Research's report titled 'OSS/BSS Market…
Read More »"What I'm suggesting is that we define services in a series of hierarchical modeling steps, with each step based on an intent model that offers a from-the-consumer-side abstraction of the service/feature being defined. For network services and features, we could assume the model had a standard structure, which defined FUNCTIONAL-PROPERTIES for the model, and INTERFACES that allow for connection of models or to users. The FUNCTIONAL-PROPERTIES…
Read More »"I generally look at Google as a vast machine learning engine that’s been stuffed with data for a decade and a half. Everything that Google does is about reach for that underlying engine - reach to get data in and reach to surface it out. The legacy web search is just one expression of that, and so is the search advertising, and so are Gmail and…
Read More »VimpelCom’s Beeline Deploys Amdocs Customer Management to Improve Customer Experience and Operational Efficiency. Amdocs announced that PJSC VimpelCom (Beeline™), one of the largest service providers in Russia, has successfully deployed an Amdocs customer management solution that improves call-center agent efficiency across the country. As a result, Beeline can increase satisfaction and retention rates of its more than 59 million mobile and fixed-line broadband customers throughout Russia.…
Read More »SKY Television Expands Relationship with NetCracker to Optimize Billing and Customer Experience. NetCracker Technology announced that SKY Television, the leading satellite pay-TV provider in New Zealand, entered into an agreement to expand the NetCracker Billing and Revenue Management solution and form a 7-year strategic partnership for professional services with NetCracker. This will enable SKY to bring more innovative offers to market and establish a more customer-centric…
Read More »Redknee and Elster to Offer End-to-End Prepay Energy Solution. Redknee Solutions Inc. announced its partnership with Elster, a market leader in Smart Grid and Energy Management Solutions. This strategic agreement is to deliver an end-to-end prepayment solution for the utilities sector that combines the Redknee Connected Suite for smart utility billing and Elster’s smart grid software solutions. The joint offering will be available across the Asian,…
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