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$500M at the speed of trust – One big difference between Warren Buffett and the OSS industry

We've recently been talking about the chasm between OSS buyers and sellers. OSS buyers and sellers desperately need each other to improve the effectiveness of the entire telecommunications industry. The size of the chasm is harming both sides. In part 2 of the "buyer-seller chasm" series, three of the biggest contributing factors were identified as: Trust Risk Confidence / Skill-set gap We're going to really drill…

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20/02/2024 No Comments

When OSS architects meet the midwit meme

Have you ever tried to be one of the cool kids and have felt that eerie feeling that you're going to get shown up for not actually being cool? In the business world we call it imposter syndrome.... but I'm already giving off strong hints about being completely uncool aren't I?  ...But let's push on anyway. I stumbled across the concept of the midwit meme whilst…

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14/02/2024 2 Comments

Avoiding the “Three-Forevers” approach to vendor selection

So you're about to embark on an OSS transformation project huh? One that involves finding the best-fit solution from the hundreds of OSS/BSS that are available on the market. You've already thought long and hard about the build vs buy conundrum and decided that rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, you'll go with the speed and "simplicity" of using an off-the-shelf solution. But now the…

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08/02/2024 No Comments

Being fired, the blessing in disguise

I've only been fired once. This might sound like a gloomy topic but it's closely tied into the Passionate About OSS origin story, so I definitely look back on it with fondness now, over a decade later. I was CTO of a consulting company, but contracted out to another company in a Program Director role. The total value of the project I was responsible for was…

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06/02/2024 No Comments

How a Lego challenge helps provide a new lens on OSS

Did you love to play with Lego as a kid? I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that since you're reading a blog about OSS, then you're probably leaning towards the technical end of the spectrum... and therefore probably did play with Lego. Perhaps you even crossed into Lego Technic that allows even more technical builds? Before I take you on the journey…

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01/02/2024 No Comments

The Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) cliff facing the telco and OSS/BSS Industries

In recent times, we've seen widespread damage caused by cybersecurity events impacting the telecommunications industry. Unfortunately, we're rapidly approaching another monumental cliff for security of telecommunications (and all the industries that rely on electronic communications). The same cliff is something the OSS/BSS industry also needs to be patently aware of. Traditional cryptographic algorithms, which underpin the security in the telecommunications sector, communications over the Internet and…

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30/01/2024 No Comments

The rise of the super-ISP and a whole-quilt OSS solution

The early 2000s (when I first started out in, and fell in love with, the OSS industry) saw many Tier-1 telcos make large OSS and BSS transformation investments. Prior to that, they'd largely run their operations from NMS level and/or using home-grown systems. Since there weren't many existing OSS to unseat, these projects were mostly greenfields transformations, where monolithic OSS solutions could be built on top…

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25/01/2024 No Comments

Similarities and differences between airlines and telco industries

The airline industry is comprised of many regional carriers.  There is no global carrier (although there are alliances). Each continent has multiple airlines. There are also local / regional airlines. Airlines of different sizes, business models and target customers. Different service offerings and different look & feel in terms of the customer experience (CX). This shares quite a few similarities with the telco industry, where there…

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23/01/2024 No Comments

An OSS design principle I need your guidance on

I find that writing these blog articles is a fantastic way of assembling a variety of ideas and distilling them into coherent stories / concepts (well, hopefully they're coherent). I always welcome feedback and corrections because it helps to round out my understanding of concepts relating to OSS. Feedback from you, dear readers, is highly valued. In this article, I'm even more in need of your…

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16/01/2024 No Comments

What will you do if the telco industry dies?

Christel Heydemann, Orange’s CEO, brought to our attention at MWC 2023 that a survey of European telcos indicated that almost half of the polled CEOs do not expect their businesses to make it through another decade. That's a pretty scary thing to think about if you've built your career around the telco industry and don't have a lot of exposure to other industries isn't it? I…

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10/01/2024 No Comments

What’s the worst thing that could happen on an OSS transformation? (part 6)

This is the sixth of the “buyer / seller chasm" series of articles (pt1, pt2, pt3, pt4, pt5).  In it, we consider how to bring Buyers and Sellers together more effectively to build better telcos. We’d previously highlighted the issues, the pain points, the sources of friction, a bunch of solutions and more. The title of this article poses the question that best exemplifies the chasm…

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03/01/2024 No Comments

Closing the OSS Buyer / Seller chasm – More solutions (part 5)

This is the fifth of the “buyer / seller” chasm articles (pt1, pt2, pt3, pt4). We’d previously highlighted the issues, the pain points, the sources of friction and more about getting Buyers and Sellers together to build better telcos. But in today’s article we’ll complete the solutions list that we started on in part four, which helps to overcome those challenges by building bridges across the…

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02/01/2024 No Comments

Closing the OSS Buyer / Seller chasm – Solutions (part 4)

This is the fourth of the “buyer / seller” chasm articles (pt1, pt2, pt3). We’ve already highlighted the issues, the pain points, the sources of friction and more about getting Buyers and Sellers together to build better telcos. But in today’s article we’ll explore some possibilities for how to overcome those challenges by building bridges across the Buyer / Seller chasm. Love them or loathe them,…

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20/12/2023 No Comments

Using a complete re-framing to reduce the OSS Buyer / Seller chasm (part 3)

This is the third part of a series that looks into the chasm that exists between OSS/BSS buyers (eg carriers, ISPs, utilities, etc) and sellers (OSS/BSS product vendors). In part 2 we pondered whether it's possible to target a 10x reduction in operational costs. We'll take a closer look into what this means with the help of a sensational piece of investigative work and data visualisation…

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15/12/2023 No Comments

How can we reduce the size of the OSS buyer-seller chasm? (part 2)

Our previous post highlighted a chasm between buyers and sellers. It has sparked quite a lot of conversation, which is exactly as intended. In another earlier post about telco reaching its burning exchange moment, we wrote: In a keynote speech at Mobile World Congress (MWC), Thierry Breton, the European Union’s internal market commissioner opined, “In the coming years, the whole industry will need to undergo a…

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06/12/2023 No Comments

Could it be possible? Is the telco industry’s biggest constraint a shortage of bridge builders? (part 1)

I'm currently lucky enough to be involved in a couple of vendor selection processes where we're helping carriers (buyers) to find the best-fit OSS vendors (sellers) for their needs. Most start a vendor selection process by preparing a looooong list of requirements. This approach takes forever to write, forever to respond to and forever to evaluate. Yep, that's three forevers and we haven't even gotten to…

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29/11/2023 No Comments

A Japanese tale of OSS monoliths versus modularity

There aren't a lot of podcasts out there that specialise in OSS (apart from ours of course), so I tend to listen to a lot of material from other fields, sometimes adjacent, sometimes not. I'm just coming to the end of this one with Peter Diamandis and Roger Hamilton. At over 2 hours, it's a longie but certainly a goodie! A very goodie!! https://www.diamandis.com/podcast/roger-hamilton In it,…

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23/11/2023 No Comments

Revolutionising Network Operations with AIOps – Our Latest Report and Video Link

As you may have noticed, we recently launched a new report, "The Future of AIOps: A Definitive Guide." In the rapidly evolving landscape of carrier networks, Operations was and still is, the linchpin of business stability. It's effectively every telco's insurance policy. With the complexity of systems and the demand for instant resolution of issues, traditional operations teams are straining under the burden. Enter AIOps -…

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13/11/2023 No Comments

The AIOps Venn Dilemma

Whilst preparing our recently launched paper, "AIOps of the Future: A Definitive Guide, " one thing came through loud and clear from the carriers we spoke with - assembling the skills-mix required to support AIOps tools / programmes. The carriers simply don't seem to be confident in being able to find, or keep, people with the right skills to drive the AIOps tools and related programmes…

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04/11/2023 No Comments

Knowledge used to be power. Is it still?

Many years ago, I was lucky enough to spend a year advising the executive team of an Asian monopoly carrier. I was helping them to implement their first ever OSS project. It was a real eye-opener on many different levels. This carrier had a strong culture of hoarding knowledge. It was well known amongst the staff that you didn't share any information with anyone else, especially…

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24/10/2023 No Comments