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China Mobile and Gemalto deploy NFC

China Mobile and Gemalto deploy NFC transport in Beijing. Gemalto has been selected by China Mobile to offer its UpTeq NFC Multi-tenant SIMs to protect consumer credentials used for mobile contactless applications?, starting with mass transit services in Beijing. China Mobile is the largest operator in the world with a total subscriber base of close to 800 million. Gemalto pre-loads the SIMs with the Beijing transport…

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27/09/2014 No Comments

Open source software supportability

"When it comes to software, I much prefer free software, because I have very seldom seen a program that has worked well enough for my needs, and having sources available can be a life-saver." Linus Torvalds. I recently had an interesting conversation with a very bright young man who is just starting out on his career. During the wide-ranging discussion he asked why more organisations don't…

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26/09/2014 No Comments

Managing the managed services

"Managed services are one of the areas where CSPs still hold sway because they are able to provide the diversity of voice, date, video, collaboration, etc and geographical coverage that the niche players can't. As such, this is a very important revenue source to CSPs where their old cash-cows (eg voice, ISDN, etc) are drying up. CSPs are increasingly offering services that go beyond the old…

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25/09/2014 No Comments

Ericsson to acquire Apcera

Ericsson acquires majority stake in enterprise IT cloud company Apcera. Ericsson announced it has agreed to acquire a majority stake in Apcera, a U.S.-based enterprise services company and creator of the next-generation platform as-a-service (PaaS) called Continuum(TM) which works across cloud, on premise and hybrid environments. In addition, Ericsson commits to significant funding toward development of next-generation technology as well as sales channel and ecosystem creation.…

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24/09/2014 No Comments

Cisco to acquire Metacloud and Memoir

Cisco has announced intent to acquire two organisations: Metacloud: deploys and operates private clouds for global organizations with a unique OpenStack-as-a-Service model that delivers and remotely operates production-ready private clouds in a customer’s data center. Metacloud’s OpenStack-based cloud platform will accelerate Cisco’s strategy to build the world's largest global Intercloud, a network of clouds, together with key partners to address customer requirements for a globally distributed, highly…

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24/09/2014 No Comments

NFV Acronyms

Here's a little cheat-sheet for NFV (Network Function Virtualisation) if you're suffering DBA (Death By Acronym). I hope you find it useful. The right-most columns refer to the NFV document that each acronym was sourced from, whereby the following links take you to those documents: NFV-001 and NFV-MAN001. Acronym Description NFV-002 NFV-MAN001 ADC Application Delivery Controller . Y API Application Programming Interface . Y BRAS Broadband…

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24/09/2014 No Comments

NFV is really three pieces

"NFV is really three pieces; the virtual network functions (VNFs) deployed to create service features, the NFV Infrastructure (NFVI) that serves as the platform for hosting/connection of the VNFs, and the management/orchestration (MANO) functions that do the deployment and management. The goal of all of this is to create a framework for deploying service logic in an agile way on a pool of virtualized resources." Tom…

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23/09/2014 No Comments

A rapid growth field

"To be successful you have to be lucky, or a little mad, or very talented, or find yourself in a rapid growth field." Edward de Bono. Regular readers will have seen my regular references to valuable tripods in the OSS world. They are the few who are able to make valuable connections across the following three domains: IT Systems - Databases, servers, high-availability architectures, programming, SDLC, application integrations, automated…

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22/09/2014 No Comments

Huawei and Infosys announce alliance

Huawei and Infosys Announce Global Partnership to Offer Cloud, Big Data and Communication Solutions. Huawei and Infosys announced a global partnership to jointly offer enterprise customers with cloud, big data and communication solutions. The alliance brings together the Huawei’s expertise in information communication technology, particularly cloud infrastructure and Infosys’ global IT service expertise. Collaborating to develop IT solutions, the partnership will target enterprise customers seeking to…

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20/09/2014 No Comments

Telefonica selects Huawei

Telefónica Selects Huawei as its Partner for Operations Support System (OSS) Solution. Huawei announced Telefónica has chosen Huawei and its end to end Performance Management Solution to manage its Latin-American networks. Telefonica chose Huawei’s OSS Solution – which became commercially available in June 2014 – as part of its OSS simplification strategy in Performance Management. Huawei’s Performance Management Solution offers one unified approach to manage all…

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20/09/2014 No Comments

Capturing design requirements

"I'll need to know your requirements before I start to design the software." Alice in this Dilbert comic. The Dilbert comic shown in the link above probably explains why many developers don't want to get outside their fishbowl (reference to a recent blog entitled "Who Discovered Water?") :) Maybe this page will help you capture your specific OSS requirements instead? Alternatively, if you'd like to be…

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20/09/2014 No Comments

Redknee signs orders in Americas

Redknee Signs $8 Million Dollars of Orders with Operator in the Americas. Redknee Solutions Inc. announced that a leading communications service provider (CSP) in the Americas region, has signed orders worth more than $8 million dollars. These new service agreements will enable the CSP to launch innovative data services and increase its competitive position in the market. Redknee supports more than 200 communications service providers and…

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19/09/2014 No Comments

Broader vs Deeper

"The only real life is the collective life of the race; individual life has no existence except as an abstraction." Auguste Comte. Starting with the network layer, each step up the management hierarchy gives a shallower representation of device data, but a broader view of device connectivity. Or as described in an earlier post entitled "What an OSS shouldn't do," each subsequent step northbound does the…

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19/09/2014 No Comments

VIVO Signs Major Expansion with NetCracker

VIVO Signs Major Expansion of Billing Managed Services Agreement with NetCracker. NetCracker Technology announced that VIVO has agreed to a major expansion of its billing managed services relationship. Under this agreement, VIVO will replace and consolidate a legacy billing system responsible for its fixed-line data services for enterprises with its existing NetCracker billing managed service, which is currently responsible for its consumer mobile offerings. This multi-year…

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18/09/2014 No Comments

Are you ready to become obsolete?

"One of the most important skills I have found in leaders and candidates is what is often called "learning agility." Learning Agility, a term coined by psychologists, simply describes your ability to rapidly learn new things." Josh Bersin, here. Fig 1: Oxford Economics - SAP 2014 Talent Research Do you think the stat in the top right corner is accurate in relation to the OSS industry?…

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18/09/2014 No Comments

Brocade Acquires Vistapointe

Brocade Acquires Vistapointe Visibility and Analytics Solutions for Mobile Network Operators. Brocade announced that it has acquired the network visibility and analytics technology assets in an all cash transaction from privately held Vistapointe, which has offices in the US, Ireland, and India. The Vistapointe technologies are software-based, carrier-grade network visibility and analytics solutions for mobile operators embracing Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) architectures. The acquisition enables Brocade…

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17/09/2014 No Comments

Software in silicon

"The latest innovation with far-reaching implications for system performance is something called “software in silicon.” The concept is exactly as it sounds—putting software right into the chip for better, even faster performance." John Soat on Forbes.com. As anyone who has worked with an OSS that has a large database can attest, OSS performance can be frustrating as queries on large data sets can be glacial. As…

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17/09/2014 No Comments

Who discovered water?

"We don’t know who discovered water, but we know it wasn’t a fish." Marshall McLuhan. If you're completely immersed in your environment and you don't push beyond its boundaries, it tends to become invisible, just as water is to a fish. And if it's invisible, there is no sense of a need to improve that environment Unfortunately, many OSS developers don't seek a perspective from outside…

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16/09/2014 No Comments

Bathtub curve

"The bathtub curve is widely used in reliability engineering. It describes a particular form of the hazard function which comprises three parts: - The first part is a decreasing failure rate, known as early failures. - The second part is a constant failure rate, known as random failures. - The third part is an increasing failure rate, known as wear-out failures. The name is derived from…

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15/09/2014 No Comments

Ericsson acquires Fabrix Systems

Ericsson acquires Fabrix, for cloud video transformation. Ericsson announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Fabrix Systems, a leading provider of cloud storage, computing and network delivery for video applications that today power some of the most advanced cable and telecom cloud DVR deployments. Fabrix Systems further extends Ericsson's leading TV and media portfolio with a cloud based scale out storage and computing platform…

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14/09/2014 No Comments

Learning from the best

"Real confidence comes not from talking all you can, but from giving the best you can." Milana May. Who are the best OSS operators in your organisation? How do you know they're the best? Is your confidence in them derived by what they say? Or does your OSS produce the statistics that prove they're the best? What metrics do you use? Fastest to resolve? Fastest to…

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12/09/2014 No Comments