The OctopOSS is waiting for new business models itself, but also facilitates new business models for CSPs and their customers
I was doing some work on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) within telco environments the other day and it made me realise that OSS can have a direct impact on every one of them. Here are a few responsibilities of OSS / BSS: TTM or MTTP – Time to Market or Mean Time to Product – […]
“Warren Buffett has said that ‘leaving the question of price aside, the best business to own is one that over an extended period can employ large amounts of incremental capital at very high rates of return’ and ‘a truly great business must have an enduring “moat” that protects excellent returns on invested capital’. We think […]
“The proposed AT&T/Time Warner deal combines two powerhouses. AT&T is the nation’s largest pay TV provider, the second-largest wireless provider, and the third-largest home Internet provider. Time Warner owns a dizzying array of media properties, including HBO, CNN, Warner Brothers, DC Comics, TBS, TNT, the Cartoon Network and broadcast rights to many live sporting events. […]
Here’s a quick strategy idea for you to extrapolate upon. Whether you represent a service provider, OSS vendor, integrator, consultant, etc, what are you most afraid your competitors might do? Chances are that your answers will represent a quantum leap in some form. Does your answer to the question help to articulate what your ideal […]
Do you know what the word ossify means? If not, can you guess? No, it’s not another of my made-up words to describe OSS in an obscure way. For those of you who didn’t already know that it’s a real word and what it means, wait for it… it means to cease developing; to stagnate. […]
We’ve recently talked about the two service provider business model extremes – OTT / DSP (Over the Top or DSP) versus REIT / TaaU (Telco as a Utility) are affecting OSS. The fast-twitch OSS that services the OTT / DSP model is bringing about some fascinating changes in the way service providers procure “assets.” They’re […]
Yesterday’s blog discussed innovation at the speed of data being even faster than innovation at the speed of software. But not all aspects of OSS need to evolve at the sames speeds. In the Olympics, sprinters need fast-twitch muscles and training to hone for speed, whilst marathon runners need slow-twitch muscles and appropriate training for […]
“Once upon a time I used to think that entrepreneurs had to be smart enough to develop a niche strategy. A nice smart strategy which will keep them hidden from the big ugly and powerful incumbents and other startups. A strategy to extract sneaky revenue. I learned how wrong I was the hard way… Turns […]
“In the first quarter of 2016, more cars were registered for phone numbers in the US than were personal cell phones.” From an article named, “Five technologies for the next ten years” The article starts, “Over the next decade, mobile, the Internet of Things, machine learning, robotics, and blockchain technologies will change a great deal…” […]
A recent blog discussed the concept of running fire drills on your OSS to see how your organisation would handle outages. In Monday’s blog, we discussed where OSS customers are going to be and what their requirements are going to look like. The “Telcos as OTT players” model will be hyperscaled and more “transient by […]
“Don’t build where they are. Build where they’re going to be.” Sam Walton. Sounds like a persuasive argument and not dissimilar to Wayne Gretzky’s famous quote about skating to where the ice hockey puck is going to be. Sam Walton had plenty of proof to back up this claim (as did Gretzky). Walton was after […]
“Whilst doing rather than planning has been a hugely successful tactic for entrepreneurs and their investors, before I go any further I want to note that as with everything you can take it too far. To get the best chance of achieving huge success, and avoid getting stuck at a local maxima, a certain amount […]
“For a period of time, Jeff Bezos was a heavy investor in marketing, but after a while he retrenched. “About three years ago we stopped doing television advertising. We did a 15-month-long test of TV advertising. And it worked, but not as much as the kind of price elasticity we knew we could get from […]
“There were 34 billion visits to US stores in 2010. By 2013, that number had plummeted 48% to 17.6 billion, according to Elite Wealth Management. As consumers make more of their purchases online, the challenge of engaging consumers in store is accelerating the rise of ‘experiential shopping’.” David Kelnar in a fascinating trend analysis on […]
… but it does answer questions. Earlier this week we discussed the fairly obvious structural shift towards customer-centricity. The telco industry is certainly riding this wave. The big telcos that I’ve worked with have certainly picked up their surfboards, but still don’t necessarily know their customers as well as they could. They know the WHAT: […]
Dell sells directly to its customers, avoiding the markups of intermediaries. Dell once diverged from this model, selling through agents, but failed and quickly reverted. The OSS market is quite clearly different from Dell’s PC and laptop market, with vastly different customer volumes and revenue per customer. However, there are some OSS companies that have […]
Most of you would have noticed a significant structural shift in the last few years towards customer advocacy and listening to the customer far more closely, not just in OSS but across most industries. This introduces some interesting contrasts though. In any given year most OSS engineers, despite being genba staff, don’t get the opportunity […]
It’s almost time for our monthly OSS breakfast in Melbourne (last Wednesday of each month). Last month saw the attendance of the only UI / UX expert I know who also has OSS experience. It surprises me that there aren’t more UI / UX / OSS experts out there, but I’m also not all that […]
“Global telecommunications study: navigating the road to 2020.” In the study listed above, executives at some of the world’s largest CSPs indicate that the players most likely to disrupt their industry is OTT app providers. Any thoughts on why they might be perceived to be 30x more influential than technology specialists, or 5x more influential […]
When it comes to designing, building and configuring OSS, there is a tendency to have a functionality delivery mindset. That is, if we can get our OSS to meet each functional requirement then we tick the box and move on to the next. There is usually a long list of requirements that need to be […]
