"You don't need to be better. You need to be different." Chase Jarvis. PassionateAboutOSS.com and my book came into existence due to a distinct gap in the OSS market that I'd noticed again and again whilst on customer assignments. As represented in the diagram below, there was a major disconnect between the Technology Context and the Business Context as it related to OSS people, projects, processes,…
Read More »"Ideally, analytics-driven telcos must have predictive analytics embedded in all their business processes, thereby moving away from decisions based on gut feeling or intuition. [The Figure below] illustrates the four phases of a telco customer life cycle - Acquisition, Relationship, Retention and Win-back. Each phase can have several embedded analytical models, which can enhance operations considerably and provide a strategic advantage." Mahendran K from a white paper on TCS.com This…
Read More »EMC expands cloud push with $1.2 billion buy of Virtustream (including Cloud Management Platform [CMP] xStream). Source: Fortune.com. Joe Tucci is at it again. The longtime EMC chief executive and chairman has made another purchase, buying Virtustream, an enterprise-oriented cloud computing company, for $1.2 billion in cash. This move follows EMC’s late 2014 acquisition of Cloudscaling and its OpenStack-based private cloud expertise. Virtustream is focused on…
Read More »"Consider as a marker the speed of travel. It improved dramatically through the late 19th and early 20th centuries with major innovations such as trains, automobiles, airplanes, jet engines and rockets. But the big advances came to an end in the 1970s. Movement by car now is no faster than it was then – indeed it is often slower. We can fly from London to New…
Read More »"But do you want to get better? It seems like a stupid question. Of course we want our organization, our work and our health to improve. But often, we don't. Better means change and change means risk and risk means fear... There are countless ways to listen, to engage with users, to learn and to improve, but before you or your organization waste time on any…
Read More »Alcatel-Lucent launches major new SDN platform. From telecoms.com. French networking company Alcatel-Lucent has unveiled its Network Services Platform (NSP), a unified, SDN-based carrier solution designed to unify service automation and network optimization. The launch of NSP marks a major milestone for A-Lu and is a strong statement ahead of its impending acquisition by Nokia. It is embracing the new, software-defined, era of network management and delivering…
Read More »"With more success comes greater problems along with greater ability to solve them." Mark Victor Hansen. Paul Graham's essays are a great read. There is something unique about the way he views his subject matter (usually startups) and then has the ability to break it down into highly insightful chunks of wisdom for his readers to learn from. For example, so much of Paul's essay entitled…
Read More »Comptel Has Won New Customer in the Philippines for FlowOne Fulfillment. Comptel has won a new customer in the Philippines for FlowOne Fulfillment. The deal consists of FlowOne Fulfillment SoftBlade licenses and related services. The value of this multi-year deal exceeds 3,1 million EUR. According to Comptel´s recently updated strategy, the Philippines is one of the strategically important growth markets for the company.
Read More »Comptel Has Won First Deal for New Integrated Analytics Solution, the Operational Intelligence SoftBlade. Comptel has won the first deal for the new integrated analytics solution, the Operational Intelligence SoftBlade. This strategically important deal with Telefonica Argentina Movistar demonstrates the value of the Data Fastermind analytics embedded to the customer's existing Data Refinery and EventLink technology platform. The deal consist of software licenses and related services…
Read More »Comverse Chosen by JT Group Ltd (formerly Jersey Telecom) to Provide Managed Services. Comverse to Manage Converged BSS Operational Systems for Leading Channel Islands Fixed and Mobile Telecommunication Services Provider. Comverse announced that JT Group Ltd. (www.jtglobal.com), the Channel Islands' leading telecommunications company, selected Comverse to provide managed services for its converged billing solution. During the five-year managed services agreement, Comverse professionals located in Jersey and…
Read More »C Spire Goes Live with NetCracker Converged Billing. NetCracker Technology announced that C Spire’s wireless unit has gone live with NetCracker’s converged billing and active mediation solutions to support both pre-paid and post-paid wireless services on a single rating and billing platform. C Spire, a diversified telecommunications and technology services company, operates the United States’ largest privately held wireless communications unit and is based in Ridgeland,…
Read More »"Today, the FBAR service [Facebook Auto-Remediation] is developed and maintained by two full time engineers, but according to the most recent metrics, it’s doing the work of approximately 200 full time system administrators. FBAR now manages more than 50% of the Facebook infrastructure and we’ve found that services have dramatic increases in reliability when they go under FBAR control. Recently, we've opened up development of remediation…
Read More »"The airline industry is notoriously brutal. As Warren Buffett once wrote in a letter to shareholders, “[I]f a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down.” Yet Southwest Airlines just recorded its 39th consecutive year of profitability—in a business sector where profits can be excruciatingly tough to come by. How does Southwest do…
Read More »Telefónica Selects Amdocs for an Operational Data Store Solution in Chile and Peru to Consolidate Data Access and Speed Decision-Making. Amdocs announced that Telefónica, one of the world's leading service providers with 341 million customers across Latin America and Europe, has selected Amdocs data management services for an operational data store solution at its operations in Chile and Peru. Amdocs' data management services is one component…
Read More »Amdocs Introduces New Big Data Actionable Analytics for Service Providers' Marketing, Network and Customer Care Operations. Amdocs announced new communications-specific applications that allow service providers to aggregate data from multiple marketing, network and customer care sources and generate business and customer insights with actionable recommendations. The announcement builds on Amdocs' big data analytics launch announcement last year which introduced the industry's first end-to-end, communications-specific big data…
Read More »"User experience is everything. It always has been, but it’s undervalued and underinvested in. If you don’t know user-centered design, study it. Hire people who know it. Obsess over it. Live and breathe it. Get your whole company on board." Evan Williams, Co-Founder, Twitter. Question for you all. Is user-centred design under-invested in within the OSS industry? I've seen good and bad GUIs. Good and bad…
Read More »"Technology provides no benefits of its own; it is the application of technology to business opportunities that produces ROI." Robert McDowell. Let's have a look at the quote above in the context of CSP service offerings, technology delivery methods and customer experiences. Let's start with POTS - Plain Old Telephony Service. The customer experience (ie being able to have a conversation with someone almost anywhere around…
Read More »NetCracker Launches NetCracker 10 Suite. NetCracker Technology announced the launch of its latest product suite, NetCracker 10, which combines capabilities in virtualization, cloud-based delivery of applications, embedded analytics and biometrics onto a single, unified platform. With these capabilities, NetCracker 10 fundamentally redefines the economics of network deployment and management, IT operations, customer experience and service creation and delivery. Using its revolutionary single-platform approach across network, service…
Read More »"The only thing that seems to outpace the evolution of technology is the evolution of customer preferences and expectations. The resultant landscape is one of ever-shortening product lifecycles and frequent industry restructuring." Neo Boon Siong. I attended the launch of Comptel's Operation Nexterday last week. In support of the launch, they also have the book version downloadable here: http://www.comptel.com/news-and-events/the-book-operation-nexterday. I was only able to attend the…
Read More »Redknee Wins $14 Million Dollar Deal in the Americas to Support a T1 Operator’s New Growth Strategy. Redknee Solutions announced that a leading communications service provider (CSP) in the Americas, has signed an order worth more than $14 million dollars with Redknee to support its Mobile Virtual Network Enabler (MVNE) growth strategy. With Redknee’s cloud-based converged billing and customer care platform, Redknee Unified, the CSP is…
Read More »Gabon Telecom Modernizes Wholesale Billing Operations with CSG. CSG International announced that Gabon Telecom is in production with CSG’s Wholesale Business Management Solution. The implementation includes CSG’s market-leading Interconnect and award-winning Intermediate solutions, and will support both the wireless and wireline business. CSG now supports the operations of the top three telecom providers in Gabon. Gabon Telecom, operating as Libertis, was the first operator in Central…
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