OSS holds the key to network slicing

“Network slicing opens new business opportunities for operators by enabling them to provide specialized services that deliver specific performance parameters. Guaranteeing stringent KPIs enables operators to charge premium rates to customers that value such performance. The flip side is that such agreements will inevitably come with tough contractual obligations and penalties when the agreed KPIs […]

Stop looking for exciting new features for your OSS

“The iPhone disrupted the handset business, but has not disrupted the cellular network operators at all, though many people were convinced that it would. For all that’s changed, the same companies still have the same business model and the same customers that they did in 2006. Online flight booking doesn’t disrupt airlines much, but it […]

Chasing the big OSS waves

The diagram below attempts to show how the entire market (whether that’s the supplier-side or the buyer-side) will absorb a given new feature. The leaders pick up the concept at T0 and then it takes another few years before the laggards implement it. Most of us in the OSS implementation world crave to be at […]

Shifting a problem to the left using OSS

Interesting table below in relation to the customer satisfaction and costs of delivering various styles of customer assurance activities: Proactive Fix Self-help L1/2/3 Assurance Field Operations Customer Satisfaction Very High High Medium Low Expense Low Medium High Very High The ambition for any organisation is to perform a shift to the left on this table. […]

If your partners don’t have to talk to you then you win

“If your partners don’t have to talk to you then you win.” Guy Lupo. Put another way, the best form of customer service is no customer service (ie your customers and/or partners are so delighted with your automated offerings that they have no reason to contact you). They don’t want to contact you anyway (generally […]

New OSS functionality or speed and scale?

We all know that revenue per bit (of data transferred across comms networks) is trending lower. How could we not? It’s posited as one of the reasons for declining profitability of the industry. The challenge for telcos is how to engineer an environment of low revenue per bit but still be cost viable. I’m sure […]

The OSS co-op business model

“A co-operative is a member-owned business structure with at least five members, all of whom have equal voting rights regardless of their level of involvement or investment. All members are expected to help run the cooperative.” Small Business WA. The co-op business model has fascinated me since doing some tech projects in the dairy industry […]

There is no differentiation left in out-bundling competitors

In 1998 Berkshire Hathaway acquired a reinsurance company called General Re. “The only significant staff change that followed the merger was the elimination of General Re’s investment unit. Some 150 people had been in charge of deciding where to invest the company’s funds; they were replaced with just one individual – Warren Buffett.” Robert G. […]

Are OSS business tools or technical tools?

I’d like to get your opinion on this question – are OSS business tools or technical tools? We can say that BSS are as the name implies – business support systems. We can say that NMS / EMS / NEMS are network management tools – technical tools. The OSS layer fits between those two layers […]

A rarely-used twist on cost-out OSS business cases

How many OSS business cases have you seen that are built around cost reduction? Most of them?? Now let me ask the same question, but with one extra word included and see whether it completely inverts your answer. How many OSS business cases have you seen that are built on capital cost reduction? None of […]

Shooting the OSS messenger

NPS, or Net Promoter Score, has become commonly used in the telecoms industry in recent years. In effect, it is a metric that measures friction in the business. If NPS is high, the business runs more smoothly. Customers are happy with the service and want to buy more of it. They’re happy with the service […]

Market for orchestration to triple from 2018 to 2023… but…

“CSPs’ needs in orchestration are evolving in parallel on several dimensions. These can be considered hierarchically. At the highest level is software that has an end-to-end service role, as is the case in the ONAP project. This software generally supports a service life-cycle perspective, containing functions from design and service creation, to provisioning and activation, […]

3 categories of OSS investment justification

“Insurer IAG has modelled the financial cost that a data breach or ransomware attack would have on its business, in part to understand how much proposed infosec investments might offset its losses. Head of cybersecurity and governance Ian Cameron told IBM Think 2018 in Sydney that the “value-at-risk modelling” project called upon the company’s actuarial […]

An OSS doomsday scenario

If I start talking about doomsday scenarios where the global OSS job industry is decimated, most people will immediately jump to the conclusion that I’m predicting an artificial intelligence (AI) takeover. AI could have a role to play, but is not a key facet of the scenario I’m most worried about. You’d think that OSS […]

The OSS farm equipment analogy

It’s an interesting season as we come up to the EOFY (end of financial year – on 30 June). Budget cycles are coming to an end. At organisations that don’t carry un-spent budgets into the next financial year, the looming EOFY triggers a use-it-or-lose-it mindset. In some cases, organisations are almost forced to allocate funds […]

1.045 Trillion reasons to re-consider your OSS strategy

“The global Internet of Things (IoT) market will be worth $1.1 trillion in revenue by 2025 as market value shifts from connectivity to platforms, applications and services. By that point, there will be more than 25 billion IoT connections (cellular and non-cellular), driven largely by growth in the industrial IoT market. The Asia Pacific region […]

How economies of unscale change the OSS landscape

“For more than a century, economies of scale made the corporation an ideal engine of business. But now, a flurry of important new technologies, accelerated by artificial intelligence (AI), is turning economies of scale inside out. Business in the century ahead will be driven by economies of unscale, in which the traditional competitive advantages of […]

A new phenomenon for IT

“In the past, business-oriented groups have had ideas about what they want to do and then they come to us… Now, they want to know what technology can bring to the table and then they’ll work on the business plan. So there’s a big gap here. It’s a phenomenon that’s been happening in the last […]

Reducing the lumps with OSS services

As promised in yesterday’s post about lumpy revenues for OSS product companies, today we’ll discuss OSS professional services revenues and the contrasting mindset compared with products. Professional services revenues are a great way of smoothing out the lumpy revenue streams of traditional OSS product companies. There’s just one problem though. Of all the vendors I’ve […]

It’s all a bit lumpy

Being an OSS product supplier to telecom operators is a tough business. There is a constant stream of outgoings on developer costs, cost of sale, general overheads, etc. Unfortunately revenue streams are rarely so smooth. In fact, they tend to be decidedly lumpy – unpredictable (in terms of timelines when forecasting inflows years in advance) […]