"The jobs-to-be-done point of view causes you to crawl into the skin of your customer and go with her as she goes about her day, always asking the question as she does something: why did she do it that way?" Clayton M. Christensen. Alex Fuller at SupplyChainCowboy.com suggests, "By focusing on the job the customer needs to accomplish, instead of the product you’re trying to sell,…
Read More »M-net Expands Relationship with NetCracker to Include TOMS Suite. NetCracker Technology announced that M-net Telecommunications GmbH, a regional communications provider in Bavaria, Germany, has selected NetCracker for a large-scale business transformation program. M-net has been a longtime NetCracker Revenue Management customer, but recently decided to implement several additional NetCracker Telecom Operations and Management Systems (TOMS) solutions to launch an end-to-end transformation that will streamline business activities…
Read More »“If you are constantly fire-fighting, you have the impression that you are surrounded by many, many problems… However, careful analysis will point to a few core problems that will solve all the fires.” Eliyahu M. Goldratt in his book, “It’s Not Luck” Have you ever worked on OSS projects/programs that seemed to have infernos blazing almost everywhere you looked? I have unfortunately (or maybe I should…
Read More »Red Hat and NEC Collaborate to Achieve Carrier-Grade OpenStack Solutions for NFV. Red Hat, Inc. and NEC Corporation announced a collaboration to jointly develop network functions virtualization (NFV) features in OpenStack in order to deliver carrier-grade NFV solutions with Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform. As communication service providers (CSPs) transform their businesses and modernize both their infrastructure and offerings, NFV enables them to deliver customer-facing…
Read More »"To be successful, the Chief Information Officer must be seen as a peer level thought leader, partnering with other C-level executives to visualize and drive the digital agenda for each company. They need to combine vision, strategy, technology governance and talent, to exploit digital opportunities and move the culture toward a digital business viewpoint." Annie Turner in "The C-level outlook: Where are the growth opportunities?" The…
Read More »"Many OSS systems were initially not linked to each other and often required manual intervention. For example, consider the case where a customer wants to order a new telephone service. The ordering system would take the customer's details and details of their order, but would not be able to configure the telephone exchange directly — this would be done by a switch management system. Details of…
Read More »"Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two, opulence is when you have three - and paradise is when you have none." Doug Larson. Will there come a time when telco services are simply like every other utility - a unit of service (ie Mb) that a residential user (and commercial?) can purchase from any retail provider that services their area…
Read More »"Everyone seems to agree that WebRTC is the next big thing that is going to shake up the enterprise communications landscape. WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) allows for real-time audio and video communications to be developed with a simple Javascript API running in a WebRTC compliant browser such as Google Chrome. There is a seemingly endless supply of enthusiasm for the possibilities that this will bring. However,…
Read More »WEHCO Media Signs Multi-Year Renewal for NetCracker Revenue Management. NetCracker Technology announced that it has signed a multi-year renewal with WEHCO Media for its NetCracker Revenue Management solution. WEHCO Media is a diversified communications company with interests in cable television, newspaper publishing and Internet properties. This agreement provides NetCracker’s Revenue Management solution in support of WEHCO’s cable television operations that span the southern and southwestern United…
Read More »"(Marissa) Mayer was hired by Google as a coder. Her first big project was to build Google's advertising system. It took her months and months to make any progress. Then Google went out and hired a star coder from DEC named Jeff Dean. Dean came into Google and built the system Mayer was trying to build in a matter of weeks. Mayer, who already decided she…
Read More »"Smart phones and social media expand our universe. We can connect with others or collect information easier and faster than ever." Daniel Goleman. Communication Service Providers are often not so great at communicating, especially internally. Notwithstanding the human behavioural impediments to "perfect communication" like politics, cliques, etc the communication issue is often just a case of there being too many people in the organisation to keep…
Read More »"The FCC's latest wireless auction brought in far more money than anyone expected. The Chairman, Tom Wheeler, set a goal of raising $10.6 billion by selling off 1,600 licenses to blocks of wireless spectrum. In the end, the government not only blew past its goal, but also its previous record of raising $19.1 billion in 2008, when it auctioned off significant pieces of the 700Mhz band…
Read More »"The innovation point is the pivotal moment when talented and motivated people seek the opportunity to act on their ideas and dreams." W. Arthur Porter. It goes without saying that key players in the OSS industry try to keep their major innovations under wraps. They're not exactly going to announce that they're working on technology X and hope to bring a innovation to the market within…
Read More »“Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.” Brian Tracy. I often talk about the need to provide training and learning opportunities for customers in their own voice (eg "Training with contextual data"). When it…
Read More »“Did you also attend fascinating presentations? What would be your advice to get your audience passionate?” Roland Leners of NetworkMining in response to an earlier blog about boring OSS presentations. This is a brilliant question, one that I wished I had’ve asked myself when writing the earlier blog. It gets to the root of the topic – how to deliver OSS presentations that have more impact.…
Read More »Telefonica Selects Amdocs for Multi-Channel, Quad-Play Transformation in Brazil. Amdocs announced that Telefonica, one of the world's leading service providers, has selected Amdocs for a business support systems (BSS) transformation project in Brazil to provide a seamless, multi-channel experience for Vivo's quad-play customers across wireline (including fiber), wireless (pre- and postpaid), Internet (including fiber) and TV (including IPTV). The project spans customer relationship management including self-service;…
Read More »Amdocs Enters Into Five-Year Managed Services Contract for Business and Operational Support Systems (B/OSS) with U.S. Cellular. Amdocs announced that U.S. Cellular, the fifth largest wireless carrier in the United States, has entered into an agreement with Amdocs to manage the operations of a range of its business and operational support systems (B/OSS). The five-year agreement covers key B/OSS areas including service activation, customer care and…
Read More »"Sometimes you'll be required to magically create a communication that's perfectly aimed at two (or more) distinct audiences....The only practical answer is to write your copy to whatever aspects the audiences have in common, particularly tonally. If you put what you know about each audience in a Venn diagram, you're writing to the middle bit where they all overlap. Although, as you can imagine, writing to…
Read More »Telenor Sweden selects MYCOM OSI for Network Performance Management MYCOM OSI, announced that the NIMS-PrOptima™ Service and Network Performance Management platform has been selected by Telenor Sweden to manage the performance of its mobile and fixed networks. Telenor Sweden’s strategy requires a new performance management solution to gather and use data from various network domains including RAN, CS Core, PS Core, VAS, IP and Probes. Telenor…
Read More »"You cannot bore someone into buying your product." David Ogilvy. As my domain name indicates, I'm passionate about OSS, so I love seeing presentations and demonstrations of OSS products / implementations. I'm fascinated by the subject matter, yet I've sat through many demonstrations that were dead-pan boring. Invariably the presenters were stuck in the features / functions rather than the benefits. If they were boring to…
Read More »"The problem with requiring people to be loud and angry to get things done is that you're now surrounded by people who are loud and angry." Seth Godin in this blog. The beauty of working as a consultant is having the opportunity to experience many different corporate cultures. Seth's blog reminded me of a small handful of past projects where the environment was aggressive and toxic. You…
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