"...with big data techniques we can start to find out where the clusters of [revenue generating businesses] and where the clusters of bad coverage are so you can be far more selective of where you rollout to." Kevin Noonan. In yesterday's blog, we discussed the likelihood of more OSS vendor suites containing large-scale network design automation tools due to the potential for quick payback periods on…
Read More »"The smart way to optimise infrastructure is to incorporate optimality into the design." Geoff Prince. In a recent presentation by Mike Quigley, NBN Co's departing CEO, he mentioned that OSS/BSS gave him his biggest nightmares. One of the NBN Co's other significant problems he mentioned was the preparation of designs to service every home in Australia with broadband network services. Given the size of the challenge, NBN…
Read More »"Multi-Technology Operations System Interface (MTOSI) is a standard for implementing interfaces between OSSs. Service providers (carriers) use multiple Operational Support Systems (OSS) to manage complex networks. Since the various parts of the network must interact, so must the OSSs. It is standardized by the Telemanagement Forum (TM Forum). The TMF Frameworx provides a set of reference models that aid in analyzing and designing next generation BSS…
Read More »"Unlike connection oriented Subnetworks which often constitute the widespread transport layer (DWDM, SONET/SDH) shared by many network applications, connectionless Subnetworks such as Metro Ethernet are likely to be deployed as smaller “islands” dedicated to a single network application (e.g., multiple sites of a corporate customer)." TM Forum's "SD1-44 Connectionless Technology Management." Many OSS tools that have been around for a while were originally conceived around connection-oriented…
Read More »Sprint Selects NetCracker OSS to Support Rollout of Revolutionary Sprint Spark Network Technology. NetCracker Technology announced that Sprint has agreed to a multi-year agreement that will expand its use of NetCracker’s OSS solutions to support its Sprint Spark™ enhanced LTE rollout. Sprint Spark uses next-gen wireless technology to deliver a whole new level of mobile Internet experience. Sprint is among the largest telecommunications providers in the…
Read More »"It is a good thing to follow the first law of holes; if you are in one, stop digging." Denis Healey. Unfortunately it's far too easy to find yourself in a hole on an OSS project. I have to admit that I've ended up in a few OSS holes myself. Even sadder, I have to admit that a few project teams I've been involved with have…
Read More »"An empty house is better than a bad tenant." Irish Proverb. As described in an earlier post (High-Rise OSS), multi-tenancy is becoming an important feature for OSS applications, particularly in highly virtualised environments. Aside from the shared infrastructure itself, there are two* key components of multi-tenancy models for OSS implementers to consider. Applications - Naturally, the OSS tool/s must deliver the functionality that allows CSPs to…
Read More »Automile, Telit M2M partner on connected car platform. Automile AB, a Swedish start-up based in Stockholm, has built a telematics platform with the Internet of Things in mind, called Automile PRO, reinventing fleet management for businesses to connect with their car and driving data via a smart cellular based OBD II device, available in 53 countries. Automile has partnered with Telit Wireless Solutions to use Telit…
Read More »"For the CEO of a Telco the development of major OSS/BSS capability can be the stuff of nightmares. It was these large IT systems that I most feared would be the bottleneck in rolling out services on the NBN." Mike Quigley , in a presentation to TelSoc. Mike was the founding CEO of NBN Co, Australia's National Broadband Network, a start-up responsible for implementing the largest…
Read More »Thanks to Evan Linwood for providing a write-up about "Mastering your OSS" on his blog over at ArenaCore.com. He's also included a photo of the first signing of my book.
Read More »"The industry talks a lot about the network data plane and the network control plane, but it tends to hand wave over the management plane in SDN. The management plane is extremely important, however, because it defines how services and applications are orchestrated. In order to run a large infrastructure, you need abstraction. In order to implement abstraction, you need models. Those models don't exist in…
Read More »"Everyone's an OSS expert, but no one is an OSS expert" Ryan Jeffery. There are so many slivers of OSS. They are broad categories such as processes, infrastructure, databases, network engineering, programming, interfaces, sales, operations, strategy, communications, change management, marketing, services, leadership, field-workforce, products, design, etc, etc. The number of possible categories is huge. But then each category can be broken down into slivers of expertise…
Read More »"When you have a serious problem, it's important to explore all of the things that could cause it, before you start to think about a solution. That way you can solve the problem completely, first time round, rather than just addressing part of it and having the problem run on and on. Cause and Effect Analysis gives you a useful way of doing this." Mind Tools.…
Read More »"If you want to understand how a lion hunts don’t go to the zoo. Go to the jungle." Sadly, I'm not sure who the true source of this quote is. It's attributed to various people in the advertising game. Irrespective of who said it first, in my mind this quote is such a powerful analogy for OSS product development. For an OSS developer, the only way…
Read More »"Spend 70 percent of your time on the core business, 20 percent on related projects, and 10 percent on unrelated new businesses." Attributed to Eric Schmidt here on CNN.com. Yesterday we spoke of the 70/20/10 Learning Model. Today we apply the same ratio, but this time it relates the the principle used by Eric Schmidt at Google to allocate effort (as described in the quote above).…
Read More »Comarch expands Latin American presence, enters Brazilian telecom market. Comarch, a provider of complete IT solutions for telecoms, announced that its BSS solutions have been chosen by a U.S.-based communications provider for the launch of services in Brazil. The launch, which builds upon Comarch’s already established presence in Latin America, will offer Brazilian telecoms and consumers cost-efficient services via VoIP technologies. Fueling the Brazilian service will…
Read More »"Michael Lombardo and Robert Eichinger published the data from one study in their 1996 book ‘Career Architect Development Planner’ which revealed that lessons learned by successful and effective managers are roughly 70% from tough jobs, 20% from people (mostly the boss) and 10% from courses and reading." 70-20-10 Forum. Does that match up with your own experiences? Have you learnt 70% of what you know (in…
Read More »"Turns out that most of us don’t like losing. In fact, it’s what the academics call loss aversion. We feel the pain of loss more acutely than we feel the pleasure of gain. In other words, we may like to win, but we hate to lose." Carl Richards here on NYTimes. If you've ever worked at a large Telco, you'll have noticed their ability to accumulate…
Read More »"One of my partners reminds us that, to be a success, a company must not only sell successfully to its immediate customers (“sell-to”), but also enable the customer to sell successfully to his/her end customers (“sell-through”), not just once, but repeatedly. Too often we (as venture investors) see businesses that have revenue traction selling to immediate customers. But, that success proves illusory when the end-customer does…
Read More »"It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them." Steve Jobs. The quote above is highly relevant for Steve Jobs' target audience, which was a mass-market retail model where it's simply not viable to design custom solutions for ever customer. The OSS market is vastly different, as there are far…
Read More »"It started with ‘What incredible benefits can we give to the customer…Where can we take the customer?’ Not starting with ‘Let’s sit down with the engineers and figure out what awesome technology we have and how we’re going to market that.’" Steve Jobs. Do you exactly know who uses your OSS (not which customers, but which of the customer's representatives use it)? Do you know what…
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