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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

Synthetic transactions

"Synthetic monitoring (also known as active monitoring) is website monitoring that is done using a web browser emulation or scripted recordings of web transactions. Behavioral scripts (or paths) are created to simulate an action or path that a customer or end-user would take on a site. Those paths are then continuously monitored at specified intervals for performance, such as: functionality, availability, and response time measures." Wikipedia.…

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11/09/2014 No Comments

Redknee signs with Global Group Mobile Operator

Redknee Receives $6 Million Orders from Leading Global Group Mobile Operator. Redknee announced that it has received $6 million in orders for software and services from a leading global group mobile network operator. The orders will support the operator to launch innovative data services and advanced customer care capabilities to enhance the experience of its customers. Redknee’s converged solution addresses the full range of the mobile…

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10/09/2014 No Comments

Data Wrangling

"Data scientists, according to interviews and expert estimates, spend from 50 percent to 80 percent of their time mired in this more mundane labor of collecting and preparing unruly digital data, before it can be explored for useful nuggets." Steve Lohr on NYTimes.com. A few months ago, we spoke of the Sexiest Job in the 21st Century (ie Data Analysts), and how there were five high-level…

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10/09/2014 No Comments

Touchpoint explosion

"Machine learning is the science of getting computers to act without being explicitly programmed. In the past decade, machine learning has given us self-driving cars, practical speech recognition, effective web search, and a vastly improved understanding of the human genome." Class synopsis for Stanford's Machine Learning course on Coursera. In a recent post, we discussed the complexity of managing virtualised networks. When we combine the device…

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09/09/2014 3 Comments

What Telco CMOs and CTOs are thinking

"Few (28%) [Telco CTOs] are likely to involve marketing in their technology strategy or vice versa (20%)." In a report commissioned by Comptel (Executive Summary shown below) covering an equal share of CMOs and CTO/CIOs at CSPs in the Asia-Pacific, EMEA and South American regions. What Telco CMOs and CTOs / CIOs Are Thinking in 2014 from Comptel Corporation Furthermore, the report indicates that 60% of…

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08/09/2014 No Comments

Points of OSS Interconnect (POSSI)

"The basic technical protocols that have enabled the Internet to work in such a globally interconnected way are developed and shared openly by a community of engineers." Rebecca MacKinnon. When evaluating OSS tools, I often look closely at the boundary cases... in a literal sense. OSS rarely operate in isolation. They gain power through interconnectivity, through cross-sharing and cross-referencing of information to provide insight. We know…

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06/09/2014 2 Comments