Passionate About OSS Blog | Passionate About OSS and BSS

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…

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…

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,…

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 -…

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…

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…

24/10/2023 No Comments

Our latest whitepaper has finally launched – AIOps of the Future: A Definitive Guide

I'm really excited to announce that a project we kicked off in collaboration with Ramandeep Bhalla, Deepak Kakadia and Rakesh Ashok, all the way back in March of 2023, has finally launched. It got a whole lot bigger than I was originally expecting. It's nearly 100 pages long, well over 30,000 words and over 40 AIOps vendors have been profiled. When we set out, we hoped…

17/10/2023 No Comments

Who are the real heroes of your OSS project? It might not be who you think!

When I first left uni with my freshly minted degrees, whenever I thought of salespeople, I had an image something like the one below in my head. This image might still be true if you're on the hunt for a used clunker. However, nothing could be further from the truth for the salespeople that make OSS projects happen. In fact, I prefer to think of these…

06/10/2023 No Comments

Getting hands-on with the OSS espresso machine

“Is there anyone in this room who can go with me to an espresso machine and make a latte?” That's what Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz reportedly asked his executive team at a November 2022 meeting, according to this WSJ article. He added: "I don’t think we can fix the systemic problem with the level of lofty knowledge that exists in this room. There's an important lesson…

03/10/2023 No Comments

The cumulative benefits of AIOps

As you will have seen in recent articles, we're due to release our latest report in a couple of weeks. It's called, "AIOps of the Future." During discussions with various people during the preparation of this report, we've noticed that some people believe they will get a silver bullet that will resolve most network events automatically, straight out of the box. Whilst these solutions certainly do…

29/09/2023 No Comments

A recurring impediment to successful implementation of AIOps: And 1 way to treat it

With our latest report, "AIOps of the Future: A Definitive Guide" tentatively penciled in for launch in 2 weeks from today, I thought I'd share a concept that kept coming through loud and clear from AIOps vendors and buyers alike - Get the data right! Especially cross-domain data! This has always been true in the world of OSS (how many OSS data death spirals have you…

26/09/2023 No Comments

Selling the destination of OSS and AIOps, not the transportation

Many of the readers of this blog veer towards the technical side of OSS (that includes me too) and therefore we could all do well to consider the old phrase, "Sell the destination, not the transportation." The phrase originally suggests that a salesperson should highlight the incredible experiences waiting for the prospective traveler in Paris, rather than the flight's features like model of plane, legroom or…

21/09/2023 No Comments

Asking your colleagues to give you AIR

Let me tell you a story. A love story. A story about data. A story about AIR. On my first OSS project, all the way back in 2000, I was brought in as a network SME. But it was only after getting involved in the data modelling and data migration activities that I really became hooked. I already knew it was possible to get a much…

14/09/2023 No Comments

A strategic OSS expert: Work smart, work lazy, build assets

Whilst reading an article on Business Insider called, "A Gen Z software engineer at Google reportedly earns $150,000 working one hour a day," I found one comment quite confronting. It wasn't the extrapolation that an 8 hour day (possibly working multiple jobs) could generate a $1.2m annual salary but the mindset. The Gen Z software engineer in question purportedly said, "It's not like you'd really get…

29/08/2023 No Comments

How our OSS can enhance customer experiences and perceptions for the telcos we work for

In a recent article, we compared how telco holds itself accountable to its internally adored five-nine availability standards, yet still has cellar-dwelling customer satisfaction scores. When you consider the expanse and complexity of the global telco network, and the millions of micro-events that occur on it each day, telco networks are amazingly resilient. Telcos certainly have a customer perception problem despite the great work they do…

23/08/2023 No Comments

How budget and mindset shapes OSS procurement differently for T1 and T2 carriers

Large carriers (let's call them T1's) tend to approach OSS procurement projects very differently from small to medium sized carriers (let's call them T2's). This is mostly driven by budget, or more to the point, how the budget frames the thinking. We'll also show you how drawing on ideas from the T2 approach can actually make T1 OSS projects more cost-effective, timely and less risky. A…

10/08/2023 2 Comments

OSS: A world of 12-day weeks and nuclear launch codes

I really enjoy the musings of Jason Fried. He blogs over here at 37signals, has written books such as "Re-work" and runs a successful (bootstrapped) software company. I enjoy his musings because they take a much more pragmatic and balanced look at the worlds of software development and business than most. Let's look at his recent post about 12-day work-weeks when many others are espousing a…

08/08/2023 No Comments

Telco innovation: 13 examples of harnessing OSS for super-charged experimentation

We know the modern digital marketplace is evolving and proliferating at mind-blowing speeds. Everything you know right now, and all the knowledge you have collected over your career, is diminishing in relevance at an increasing rate. The same is true of us as individuals as well as us as the telco industry and the companies within it. It's not that telcos are failing to innovate, but…

02/08/2023 No Comments

What’s your OSS Linda Evangelista Number?

Linda Evangelista, a supermodel back in the day, was famously quoted as saying, "I don't get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day." When conducting vendor selection processes with my clients, I tend to find the "OSS Linda Evangelista number" quite helpful. It's the minimum dollar amount that a vendor will be prepared to accept to implement their solution as an OSS project. For…

27/07/2023 No Comments

Oh, sorry. I had it in 2D. Good luck!

Have you ever worked out in the field, turning design packs / drawings prepared by colleagues in your design team into built network? Have you ever worked at head office (eg the NOC) and interacted with your colleagues out in the field? If you have, you'll know there's often a disconnect in situational awareness between back-office / remote and field workers. The comment at 1:45 in…

25/07/2023 No Comments

If only the rest of the world could live up to the telco five-nines standard

The world relies on telecommunications providers for so much of our modern lifestyle. Yet the telco industry consistently fails to impress customers. Telcos interminably underperform on NPS (Net Promoter Score) metrics, such as the benchmark report from customergauge.com: Stone...Cold...Last!! Yet against this backdrop, the telco industry has always held itself to incredibly high engineering standards - our beloved "Five-Nines" availability metric. That's 99.999% uptime for the…

18/07/2023 No Comments

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