Passionate About OSS Blog | Passionate About OSS and BSS

Cisco intends to acquire Embrane

Cisco Announces Intent to Acquire Embrane. The following is quoted from Cisco's blog site (link above) "With agility and automation as persistent drivers for IT teams, the need to simplify application deployment and build the cloud is crucial for the data center. Cisco announced its intent to acquire Embrane, a provider of a lifecycle management platform for application-centric network services. As we continue to drive virtualization…

03/04/2015 No Comments

Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO)

"The purpose of this white paper is to identify the essential Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO) and management capabilities necessary to achieve the key aims of the MEF’s Third Network1. These capabilities will allow the Third Network not only to dramatically decrease the time to establish or modify the characteristics of the end-to-end service, but will also assure the overall service quality and security for these services.…

03/04/2015 No Comments

Brazilian Operator selects CSG

Brazilian Operator Selects CSG’s Mediation Solution. CSG International announced a new contract in Brazil for CSG’s award-winning Intermediate solution. With this latest contract, CSG Intermediate now supports the operations of 4 of the 5 leading mobile providers in Brazil. CSG will provide centralized data management across the company’s business operations. Known for its high average revenue per user (ARPU) as well as its low rate of…

02/04/2015 No Comments

Extend and expand

"What the early adopter is buying, is some kind of change agent. By being the first to implement this change in their industry, the early adopters expect to get a jump on the competition, whether from lower product costs, faster time to market, more complete customer service, or some other comparable business advantage. They expect a radical discontinuity between the old ways and the new, and…

02/04/2015 1 Comment

Chief Simplification Officer attributes

"Do you think that such a role (a Chief Simplification Officer or Project Simplification Officer) is justified? If so, what do you think are the essential traits that this person would need?" I posed these questions in a recent article entitled, "Chief Simplification Officer," so rather than just leave you with an open question, today I'd like to give my views on what attributes might be…

01/04/2015 No Comments

Build learning into everything

"By seeking and blundering we learn." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In the grand scheme of OSS and all its constituent pieces, no one person knows very much at all. That's why we have to build learning (and teaching) into everything we do in OSS, as individuals, as organisations and as products. It's for this reason that I'm such a believer that analytics and learning management systems…

31/03/2015 No Comments

Chief Simplification Officer

"What simple action could you take today to produce a new momentum toward success in your life?" Tony Robbins. Complexity is the single biggest challenge that stands in the way of us delivering OSS masterpieces. As described in, "The triple constraint of complexity," the reduction of any complexity should have a multiplier effect towards the success of the project. This principle doesn't just apply to OSS,…

30/03/2015 4 Comments

Reverb Networks joins Nokia Networks in OSS Interoperability

Reverb Networks joins Nokia Networks in OSS Interoperability Initiative (OSSii). Self-optimizing network (SON) specialist Reverb Networks has signed a bi-lateral agreement with Nokia Networks within the OSS Interoperability Initiative (OSSii) to ensure the future availability and reliability of network data formats for their popular SON solution, InteliSON. The OSSii was founded by Nokia Networks, Ericsson, and Huawei as the initiating parties, with the aim of simplifying…

29/03/2015 No Comments

Coping with fluid scoping

"You need to overcome the tug of people against you as you reach for high goals." George S. Patton. Long-time readers of this blog will be familiar with the use of Seth Godin's thrashing principle in OSS to attempt to get a scope locked in and developed against. The reality is that despite all the best intentions, it's incredibly rare for changes in scope to appear…

27/03/2015 No Comments

Top 10 Global Telecom Operator selects CSG

Top 10 Global Telecom Operator Standardizes on CSG Mediation. CSG International announced that one of the world’s top 10 global telecom operators, according to Total Telecom’s annual Global 100 report, has selected CSG as its preferred network data mediation solution provider. This latest agreement expands CSG’s current relationship with the operator and builds upon the positive results achieved using CSG Intermediate in the client’s operations in…

26/03/2015 No Comments

Dataviz in OSS

"Data visualisation is a growing field of expertise. It combines the skills of the designer with those of the developer and the journalist, to create interactive layouts that help people explore data for themselves." Olly Arbor. Do you have a dataviz expert on your OSS team? If ever there were a field that needed dataviz, OSS would be it. OSS collect ridiculously large volumes of data.…

26/03/2015 No Comments

Harnessing OSS momentum

"The most effective way to do it, is to do it" Amelia Earhart. An earlier post entitled, "The OSS inertia principle," spoke of the challenge of nudging massive organisations from a state of inertia to a state of momentum. In some cases, thinking, talking and documenting represent the application of force that gets an organisation moving. In large organisations, they can be a form of procrastination…

25/03/2015 No Comments

The Telco/Utility Model

"Something strange is happening in a rubbish bin in Milton Keynes. On his way to the bus stop, Alex drops a drinks carton into it. The bin’s sensor system detects that an item has passed the top ridge of the container. It sends out a signal that alerts local rubbish trucks. Before Alex’s bus arrives, Becky’s truck comes to empty the bin. Milton Keynes Council’s MK:Smart…

24/03/2015 No Comments

Where OSS meets Smart Grids

"It’s less about boxes and bases stations; it’s now a lot about software analytics, capability of reconfiguration and all that. It’s a very big shift from what we have seen in the last years." Professor Mischa Dohler here. In the video in the link above, Prof Dohler suggests there are two major disruptions happening in relation to the telecommunications industry - one is an internal one…

23/03/2015 No Comments

Afghan Wireless Expands with Redknee

Afghan Wireless Expands Growth Strategy with Redknee's Charging and Policy Solution. Redknee Solutions Inc. announced that it is supporting Afghan Wireless Communication Company (AWCC), the leading telecom operator in Afghanistan to differentiate its services and provide an advanced customer experience for its subscribers. Utilizing the Redknee Unified charging and policy solution, AWCC is leveraging convergent services, to monetize their next generation data strategy and support future…

19/03/2015 No Comments

Homogeneous thinking

"There is no need for us all to be alike and think the same way, neither do we need a common enemy to force us to come together and reach out to each other." Anthon St. Maarten. Over the years, I've worked in a few OSS environments where I had the distinct feeling that there was too much homogeneity amongst the team. You could say that it is…

19/03/2015 No Comments

Ericsson acquires Sunrise Technology

Ericsson acquires telecom IT services business in China. Ericsson has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the telecom business of Sunrise Technology, a provider of IT services in the operations and business support systems (OSS/BSS) domain. Sunrise Technology, which is headquartered in Guangzhou, China, will continue to exist as a separate entity - serving customers in sectors other than telecom. The unit being acquired has a…

18/03/2015 No Comments

Overcoming restistance to change

"Inspiration is much more likely to develop from the habit of consistently paying attention to life’s small moments." Robert Maurer, from his book, "The Spirit of Kaizen: Creating Lasting Excellence One Small Step at a Time." As we all know, OSS projects are a combination of people, process and technology. However, since most of us OSS implementers are technologists at heart, we have a tendency to…

18/03/2015 No Comments

Cisco invests $21m in STEM

"Cisco Systems Australia has announced a five-year investment program expanding to train over 100,000 Australian tertiary and school students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) skills. AUSTEM 2020 is a new program, which builds on Cisco Australia’s long-term commitment to tackle the STEM skills shortage and help create an innovation economy, boost productivity and boost jobs growth." Medianet. The press release also states that Cisco’s…

17/03/2015 No Comments

Supporting Ops

"The mind is seldom quickened to very vigorous operations but by pain, or the dread of pain. We do not disturb ourselves with the detection of fallacies which do us no harm.." Samuel Johnson. Operational Support Systems are exactly that - OPERATIONAL support systems. Many people in our industry lose sight of that fact sometimes. For example, how many of us actually know what our CSP's…

16/03/2015 No Comments

Schurz Communications renews with NetCracker

Schurz Communications Signs Multi-Year Renewal for NetCracker Billing and Revenue Management Solution. NetCracker Technology announced that it has signed a multi-year renewal with Schurz Communications for its NetCracker Billing and Revenue Management solution. This extension underscores NetCracker’s ongoing commitment to deliver cutting-edge solution functionality to cable operators across the United States. Schurz Communications is an Indiana-based communications provider, offering cable services across Indiana, Florida, Maryland and…

14/03/2015 No Comments

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