The OctopOSS is waiting for new business models itself, but also facilitates new business models for CSPs and their customers
Well, would you hire a furniture maker as CEO of an OSS vendor? At face value, it would seem to be an odd selection right? There doesn’t seem to be much commonality between furniture and OSS does there? It seems as likely as hiring a furniture maker to be CEO of a car maker? Oh […]
Unfortunately for OSS vendors / integrators, their business models have a dependency (and major risk) on accounts receivable. Investopedia states, “Accounts receivable are amounts of money owed by customers to another entity for goods or services delivered or used on credit but not yet paid for by clients.” One of the earliest OSS projects I […]
A friend of mine has a great saying, “only do what only you can do.” Do you think that this holds true for the companies undergoing digital transformation? Banks are now IT companies. Insurers are IT companies. Car manufacturers are now IT companies. Telcos are, well, some are IT companies. We’ve spoken before about the […]
Is your OSS a single pane of glass, or a single glass of pain? You can tell I’m being a little flippant here. People often (perhaps idealistically) talk about OSS as being the single pane of glass (SPOG) to manage a network. I say “idealistically” for a couple of reasons: There are usually many personas […]
So far this week we’ve been focusing on ways to improve the OSS transformation process. Monday provided 7 models for achieving startup-like efficiency for larger OSS transformations. Tuesday provided suggestions for speeding up the transition from OSS PoC to getting the solution into production, specifically strategies for absorbing an OSS PoC into production. Both of […]
Do you work in a large organisation? Have you also worked in smaller organisations? Where have you felt more efficient? I’ve been lucky enough to work on some massive OSS transformations for large T1 telcos. But I’ve always noticed the inefficiency of working on these projects when embedded inside the bureaucracy of the beast. With […]
“You don’t get differential advantage from your products, it’s from the way you speak to and relate to your customers . All products are excellent these days.” The quote above paraphrases Malcolm McDonald from a podcast about his book, “Malcolm McDonald on Value Propositions: How to Develop Them, How to Quantify Them.” This quote had […]
In yesterday’s post we talked about the cost of quality. We talked about examples of primary, secondary and tertiary costs of bad data quality (DQ). We also highlighted that the tertiary costs, including the damage to brand reputation, can be one of the biggest factors. I often cite an example where it took 7 truck […]
Have you noticed an increasing presence of open-source tools in your OSS recently? Have you also noticed that open-source is helping to trigger transformation? Have you thought about why that might be? Some might rightly argue that it is the cost factor. You could also claim that they tend to help resolve specific, but common, […]
Friday’s post posed a re-framing exercise that asked you (whether customer, seller or integrator) to run a planning exercise as if you MUST offer a money-back guarantee on your OSS (whether internal or external). It’s designed to force a change in mindset from risk mitigation to risk removal. We have another re-framing exercise for you […]
We’ve talked about some of the emotions we experience in the OSS industry earlier this week, the trauma of OSS and anxiety relating to OSS. To avoid these types of miserable feelings, it’s human nature to seek to limit them. We over-analyse, we over-specify, we over-engineer, we over-document, we over-contract, we over-react, we over-estimate (nah, […]
On Tuesday we pondered, “Would an OSS duopoly be a good thing?” It cited two examples of operating systems amongst other famous duopolies: Microsoft / Apple (PC operating systems) Google / Apple (smartphone operating systems) Yesterday we provided an example of why consolidation is so much more challenging for OSS companies than say for Coke […]
Yesterday’s post, “Would an OSS duopoly be a good thing?” talked about the benefits and challenges of consolidation of the number of suppliers in the OSS market. I also promised that today I’ll share an example of the types of challenge that can be faced. An existing OSS supplier (Company A) had developed a significant […]
The products/vendors page here on PAOSS has a couple of hundred entries currently. We’re currently working on an extended list that will almost double the number on it. More news on that shortly. The level of fragmentation fascinates me, but if I’m completely honest, it probably disappoints me too. It’s great that it’s providing the […]
The first OSS project I worked on had a full-suite, single vendor solution. All products within the suite were integrated into a single database and that allowed their product developers to introduce a lot of cross-linking. That has its strengths and weaknesses. The second OSS suite I worked with came from one of the world’s […]
Like most readers, I’m sure your OSS/BSS suite consists of many components. What if you were to look at each of those components as assets? In a share portfolio, you analyse your stocks to see which assets are truly worth keeping and which should be divested. We don’t tend to take such a long-term analytical […]
My favourite OSS saying – “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” OSS are amazing things. They’re designed to gather, process and compile all sorts of information from all sorts of sources. I like to claim that OSS/BSS are the puppet masters of any significant network operator because they assist in every corner of […]
As the OSS vendors / suppliers page here on PAOSS shows, there are a LOT of different OSS options, making it an extremely fragmented market. But there’s something of a reason for that fragmentation – customer requirements for OSS come in all shapes and sizes. Here are four of the major categories that I’ve been […]
Not sure if you noticed, but AWS posted this job advertisement on LinkedIn a couple of days ago – Business Portfolio Leader – Telecom OSS/BSS Solutions. The advertisement includes the following text: “Amazon Web Services (AWS) is leading the next paradigm shift in computing and is looking for a world class candidate to manage an […]
This is the fourth, and final part (I think) in the series on killing the OSS RFI/RFP process, a process that suppliers and customers alike find to be inefficient. The concept is based on an initiative currently being investigated by TM Forum. The previous three posts focused on the importance of trusted partnerships and the […]
