Passionate About OSS Blog | Passionate About OSS and BSS

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…

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…

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…

06/09/2014 2 Comments

Cloudification threatens OSS and BSS

"For companies like VM Ware and Microsoft no-one predicted that one of their biggest threats would come from an online book retailer, yet Amazon Web Services has upended the entire software industry. The challenges for VM Ware today or Apple nearly two decades ago are being repeated in many other industries as competitors appear from unexpected directions, which is why it’s important not to ignore and…

05/09/2014 No Comments

Redknee Signs with Tier 1 APAC Operator

Redknee Signs $6 Million Dollar Order with Tier 1 APAC Operator. Redknee Solutions Inc. announced that a Tier 1 communications service provider (CSP) in Asia Pacific has placed an additional software expansion order, worth $6 million dollars, to support the growth in subscribers and data usage on its 4G/LTE network. The first expansion order for $9 million dollars was announced on June 12, 2014. This software…

04/09/2014 No Comments

Frenemies

"The idea of frenemies – or co-competition – isn’t new to the IT industry as we are in this period that we’ve called the tectonic shifts that are underway. All of us need to be somewhat careful about who’s our friends and who’s our enemies as we go through that period and be as nice as we can to everybody because who’s our friends and who’s…

04/09/2014 No Comments

Only 2 weeks left til TM Forum local chapter launches in Australia

TM Forum local chapter launches in Melbourne and Sydney. Sydney: September, 16th, 6:30pm Shelbourne Hotel, 200 Sussex St., Sydney Melbourne: September, 18th 6:30pm Ether Centre, 265 Little Bourke St, Melbourne We’ll start off the evening with a few words from TM Forum’s Chairman, Michael Lawrey, followed by plenty of networking time and free food and drinks. RSVPs are required by Sept. 12. Please register by contacting Megan…

03/09/2014 No Comments

ITSM, DCIM and OSS

"I like your comparison between DCIM (Data Centre Infrastructure Management) and OSS. Do you see ITSM tools as a 3rd market or do you combine this with DCIM? I believe that traditional OSS will get challenged by ITSM as the telco service portfolio at least for enterprise customers will be more and more dominated by IT services." Great question(s) from a subscriber named Nico Wauters of…

03/09/2014 No Comments

Upstream complexity

"How important is it to synchronize product catalog and service catalog, specifically who needs to master what to fulfill order orchestration and fulfillment processes? Should one be the master over the other? And is it important to have just one Catalog view from an operational perspective?" Great question(s) from a subscriber named Mikey. Let's start with one concept. OSS/BSS usually fail or under-deliver because of complexity…

02/09/2014 No Comments

Spark New Zealand selects Xstream

Spark New Zealand selects Xstream's Cloud-based OTT/TV Platform. Spark New Zealand (formerly Telecom NZ) has selected Xstream MediaMaker™, a cloud-based OTT/TV video management platform for its new OTT video service, Lightbox. Lightbox is a cross platform New Zealand-made subscription video on demand service (SVOD) that can be used across multiple devices, including laptop, desktop, iPad and Airplay on Apple TV. Xstream MediaMaker's in built device management…

01/09/2014 No Comments

Complex management of virtualised networks

"...the SDN idea is to separate out the control functions of the network into a cloud-like management layer leaving network elements in a data-forwarding layer. This means the smart component of networks can be made more efficient and less expensive by making use of the concepts of abstraction, modularity and virtualization that are already common in the IT world. At the same time the basic network…

01/09/2014 No Comments

MTBF for virtualised networks

"Under certain engineering assumptions ... the failure rate for a complex system is simply the sum of the individual failure rates of its components, as long as the units are consistent, e.g. failures per million hours. This permits testing of individual components or subsystems, whose failure rates are then added to obtain the total system failure rate" Wikipedia. When writing a recent blog about Data Centre…

31/08/2014 2 Comments

Value chain

"A value fabric is a mesh of interwoven, cooperating organizations and individuals collectively called parties. The value fabric shows the interaction among collaborating parties." Back in the first week of August 2014, we covered a series of blogs that discussed how OSS can provide supply chain differentiation and competitive advantages. Following this series, Evan Linwood suggested to have a closer look at the work of John…

30/08/2014 No Comments

DCIM Opportunities No. 3

"A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg." Samuel Butler. Three days ago, we discussed the similarities and differences between DCIM (Data Centre Infrastructure Management) and OSS. In it, we indicated that Data Centres (DCs) tend to have a higher proportion of virtualised assets than traditional CSPs. This isn't so much an opportunity, but a clear direction for the future of communications assets…

29/08/2014 No Comments

Cable South Media III extends with NetCracker

Cable South Media III Agrees to Multi-Year Hosted Managed Services Extension with NetCracker. NetCracker Technology announced that Cable South Media III has agreed to a multi-year extension of its hosted managed services agreement for NetCracker’s fully hosted order-to-cash solution. This solution supports ordering, provisioning and billing for all of Cable South Media III’s services. Cable South Media III is a U.S.-based cable operator delivering triple-play services,…

28/08/2014 No Comments

DCIM Opportunities No. 2

"GIS is a form of digital mapping technology. Kind of like Google Earth, but better." Arnold Schwarzenegger. Two days ago, we discussed the similarities and differences between DCIM (Data Centre Infrastructure Management) and OSS. In it, we indicated that Data Centres (DCs) tend to have less outside plant or inter-site connectivity (ie most power and network links tend to reside within the Data Centres), but cable management…

28/08/2014 No Comments

DCIM Opportunities

"The growth rate of DCIM far outstrips that for the datacenter equipment industries and for the enterprise IT segment as a whole; however, the actual numbers are still small compared with other categories of enterprise software (such as IT service management, ERP, databases or security). Nevertheless, the DCIM market is proving attractive to some big equipment suppliers." Rhonda Ascierto in a 451 Research Report. In yesterday's…

27/08/2014 No Comments

TM Forum Local Chapter Launches in Melbourne and Sydney

I have some great news to share. TM Forum is launching a new program called TM Forum Local and Australia is the first location in the world to form a local chapter. I’d like to invite you to be part of the kick-off in Australia. TM Forum Local lets you connect and network with like-minded people local to your area. At our Local events, you can meet,…

26/08/2014 No Comments

DCIM – Data Centre Infrastructure Management

"It is very important to get both IT and facilities groups together before even jotting down the requirement for a DCIM solution. One needs to look at holistic solutions and not treat IT and facilities management as two different silos." Vivek Vikram Singh. Data Centre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) shares much of its DNA with OSS, but also has a number of unique differences. Similarities: IT and…

26/08/2014 No Comments

The CAPEX dichotomy

"I am into selling ones and zeros and transporting them better than anybody else." Randall L. Stephenson (CEO of AT&T) The table below (as researched on 17 July 2015) is a tale of two ages in the world of communications. The first set of five are carriers, organisations born in the industrial age that are asset-heavy and rely on those assets to derive a bulk of their income. The…

25/08/2014 No Comments

Revenue from apps

"As you can see from the chart only 3% of mobile app developers are making more than $100k per month/$1.2m per year. Assuming the same power law applies as monthly revenues scale further it’s a fair guess that only 3% of that 3%, i.e. 0.1%, are making $1m+ per month or $12m+ per year. That’s one in a thousand making enough to be interesting as a…

22/08/2014 1 Comment

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