"So I'm going to tell you, it's going to be a good year. There are good players all over this country, and it is our job as a scouting department to find them, draft them, sign them, develop them, and help us to continue to win championships. So it's going to be a good year." Roy Clark. I see professional sports organisations as great entertainment but…
Read More »"As long as you don't make waves, ripples, life seems easy. But that's condemning yourself to impotence and death before you are dead." Jeanne Moreau. Have you ever noticed how the applications within some large OSS suites are so tightly bound that their operators are petrified of the ripple effect - where they're not so worried about making a configuration change in one application but are…
Read More »"...the term Lowest Common Denominator means appealing to as many people at once as possible. There are varying interpretations on what this implies. Taking an upbeat viewpoint, it might be admirable; making stories that most people can relate to" TVropes.com It has been said that television programming caters to the intellect of an 8 year old, in this case television's lowest common demoninator, to ensure that…
Read More »“Just take a look at the menu We give you rock a la carte We'll breakfast at Tiffany's We'll sing to you in Japanese We're only here to entertain you” Queen. I recently sat in on a presentation that wasn’t about OSS or even ICT funnily enough, but it did remind me of many OSS presentations I’ve witnessed in the past. OSS sales presentations and training…
Read More »"Intent doesn’t change as a result of a link going down, a server crashing, changing cloud providers, changing switch vendors, upgrading firmware or any other change to the infrastructure." David Lenrow, chair of the ONF Northbound Working Group, who recently hosted the Intent-based Summit, which has passed a proposal to commence work on the Network Intent Composition (NIC). Policy control is already a well-established feature in…
Read More »"Employees should never be told to protect valuable assets. If they're told this, they usually protect an object that may be expensive to replace but is not what creates or could destroy value. How value is created is a business' most important asset, and that is what people must focus their protection resources on." Scott Borg. For years, OSS have been seen as insurance policies in…
Read More »FASTWEB Selects NetCracker to Transform Service Layer. NetCracker Technology announced that FASTWEB, one of the main telecommunications providers in Italy, selected NetCracker for its OSS transformation to optimize operations and provide better quality services for its customers. FASTWEB offers a wide range of integrated Internet as well as fixed and mobile voice services to residential customers and small businesses. FASTWEB also offers advanced telecommunications and ICT…
Read More »"You can think of Docker [a container technology] as a shipping container for the online universe, a tool that lets developers neatly package software and move it from machine to machine. Today, when running large online applications such as a Google or a Twitter or a Facebook, developers and businesses often spread software across dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of machines, and Docker provides a more…
Read More »Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent to combine to create an innovation leader in next generation technology and services for an IP connected world. Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent announce today their intention to combine to create an innovation leader in next generation technology and services for an IP connected world. The two companies have entered into a memorandum of understanding under which Nokia will make an offer for all of…
Read More »Ericsson to transform OSS for Orange Polska. Orange Polska has selected Ericsson as its OSS transformation partner, signing a six-year deal whereby Ericsson will carry out the transformation and optimization of processes and information systems. Ericsson will supply Orange Polska with consulting and systems integration capabilities, as well as an operations support system (OSS) software suite, which provides tools for network planning, inventory, fulfillment and assurance…
Read More »"If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. Most of them will be wrong, and what you have to learn is which ones to throw away." Linus Pauling. I love this quote from Linus Pauling. I see it as an Engineer's equivalent of a sales funnel. The more ideas (leads) you stuff into the top of the funnel, the more likely you'll…
Read More »"The explosion of unstructured machine-generated from logs, sensors, networks and devices over the past few years has led to an exponential increase in data volume. Furthermore, the increase has been happening in parallel with a thirst for real-time Big Data applications. Enterprises simply want to extract greater value from their real-time Big Data asset. However, applications based on the traditional store-first, process-second data management architectures are…
Read More »"Essential: Document with just barely good enough detail. Valuable: Document only when we actually need it, not when we want it. Timely: Documentation should be done in a just-in-time (JIT) manner, when we need it." Ashish Sharma, here The Manifesto for Agile Software Development values "working software over comprehensive documentation". This ethos is particularly relevant for OSS projects. A document exists to communicate in ways that…
Read More »Comptel Receives Order From POST Technologies. Comptel has received a major order from POST Technologies in Luxembourg. This 3 year contract is a continuation of the long customer relationship that already exists since 1996. The deal amounting to 2.4 million euros comprises Fulfillment software licenses and services. “We are really pleased to expand our customer relationship with POST Technologies in Luxembourg. It is great to be…
Read More »Telefónica NFV reference lab releases OpenMANO NFV orchestration stack. Telefónica has released its OpenMANO NFV orchestration stack to open source community of developers through GitHub portal. OpenMANO is an open source project that provides a practical realization of the Management and Orchestration reference architecture (NFV MANO), currently under ETSI’s NFV ISG standardization. Today, the stack has become a key component in Telefónica’s NFV Reference Lab, being…
Read More »Ericsson closes acquisition of Canada-based TimelessMIND Ericsson announced the completion of its acquisition of TimelessMind, a Canada-based consulting and systems integration company specializing in operations and business support (OSS/BSS). The closing follows the announcement on February 20, 2015, that Ericsson entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of TimelessMIND. Paolo Colella, Vice President and Head of Consulting and Systems Integration at Ericsson, says: With TimelessMind…
Read More »InfoVista Acquires Ipanema Technologies to Maximize Business Application Experience. InfoVista announced it has acquired Ipanema Technologies. Ipanema delivers automated solutions to guarantee application performance across enterprises’ large and complex networks. For the fifth consecutive year, Ipanema has been positioned as a Visionary in Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant for WAN Optimization”. The company’s solutions are used by more than 700 global enterprises and have been adopted by Tier-1…
Read More »"We see customers as invited guests for a party and we are the hosts. It is our job every day to make every aspect of the customer experience a little bit better." Jeff Bezos. An earlier post discussed value chains and the newer paradigm of value fabrics. Another post indicated how the value fabric can be used by CSPs to deliver services to customers without needing…
Read More »América Móvil Selects NEC and NetCracker to Lead OSS Consolidation and Transformation Across All LATAM Operators. NEC Corporation and NetCracker Technology announced today that they were selected to provide a consolidated, end-to-end OSS solution for all of América Móvil’s (AMX) Latin American operators. This program will include AMX operators in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico and deploy an international long-distance network across…
Read More »Accenture and Alcatel-Lucent Helping Telefonica Enhance Experience For Consumers in Europe and Latin America. Accenture and Alcatel-Lucent have announced a four-year agreement with Telefonica to deploy Alcatel-Lucent’s Motive Customer Experience Management software for Telefonica’s residential customers in European and Latin American countries. As a result, customers will gain more control over their broadband experience, including self-help tools to reduce calls to customer care and shorten resolution…
Read More »"Security experts are such a cheery lot. They’ll usually tell you you’re doing everything wrong and that we’re all doomed." Craig Matsumoto in an article here. I don't profess to be a network security expert, but I can't help but thinking that network virtualisation will bring security and OSS experts far closer together than ever before. I can envisage a merging of the NOC (Network Operations…
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