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Return on Analytics (ROA)

"Return On Investment (ROI) for analytics and business intelligence solutions is increasing and currently delivering on average $13.01 for every dollar spent, according to a new analysis by Nucleus Research. The study analyzes the actual costs and benefits of Nucleus published case studies on individual companies’ analytics deployments." BusinessWire. Have you ever tried to quantify the ROI for analytics that you perform on your OSS /…

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30/09/2014 No Comments

Dot your API’s and cross your t’s

“And will you succeed? Yes indeed, yes indeed! Ninety-eight and three-quarters percent guaranteed!” Dr. Seuss. Linking keys are an important consideration for cross-referencing disparate data sets. And in OSS you have lots of disparate data sets to pull together. For example, every different NMS, EMS, BSS (and even other OSS tools) create / manage disparate data sets. Some of the greatest insights delivered by an OSS…

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29/09/2014 2 Comments

Ericsson to acquire GEOSS

Ericsson announces intention to acquire GEOSS consulting firm. Ericsson announced its intention to acquire GEOSS, an operations support systems (OSS) consulting company based in Germany. The acquisition, which is subject to regulatory approval, further strengthens Ericsson’s already industry-leading position in OSS for communications service providers. Ericsson intends to take over the entire staff and management of 30 people. GEOSS’ core competencies include consultancy, systems development, systems…

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28/09/2014 No Comments

Telefonica selects Comarch again

Telefonica selects Comarch as the recommended supplier of configuration management, network planning & design for LatAm and Germany. Comarch will support Telefónica in a large transformation aimed at modernizing their networks, operations and OSS. Comarch announced that Telefónica, one of the world's leading service providers with 316 million customers, selected Comarch as the recommended vendor of Configuration Management, Network Planning & Design for Latin America and…

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27/09/2014 No Comments

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