OSS Transformation is all about managing change – organisationally, functionally and operationally during in-flight projects. This is the most commonly overlooked factor when planning OSS projects
Geoff Moore’s seminal book, “Crossing the Chasm,” described the psychological chasm between early buyers and the mainstream market. Seth Godin cites Moore’s work, “Moore’s Crossing the Chasm helped marketers see that while innovation was the tool to reach the small group of early adopters and opinion leaders, it was insufficient to reach the masses. Because […]
Sourced from: www.couponraja.in I sometimes wonder whether OPEX is underestimated when considering OSS investments, or at least some facets (sorry, awful pun there!) of it. Cost-out (aka head-count reduction) seems to be the most prominent OSS business case justification lever. So that’s clearly not underestimated. And the move to cloud is also an OPEX play […]
A few years ago I was lucky enough to be invited to lead a bid. I say lucky because the partner organisations are two of the most iconic firms in the tech industry. The bid was for bleeding-edge work, potentially worth well over a billion dollars. I was a little surprised to be honest. I […]
In a post last week we posed the question on whether Inventory Management still retains relevance. A friend recently posited that inventory tools are no longer relevant. I see where he’s coming from but also tend to disagree (but with an open mind). IMHO There are certainly uses cases where inventory remains unquestionably needed. […]
“When experts are wrong, it’s often because they’re experts on an earlier version of the world.” Paul Graham. OSS experts are often wrong. Not only because of the “earlier version of the world” paradigm mentioned above, but also the “parallel worlds” paradigm that’s not explicitly mentioned. That is, they may be experts on one […]
In yesterday’s post, we talked about what needs to happen for a network operator to build an autonomous network. Many of the factors extended beyond the direct control of the OSS stack. We also looked at the difference between designing network autonomy for an existing OSS versus a ground-up build of an autonomous network. We […]
….I want to make my network so observable, reliable, predictable and repeatable that I don’t need anyone to operate it. That’s clearly a highly ambitious goal. Probably even unachievable if we say it doesn’t need anyone to run it. But I wonder whether this has to be the starting point we take on behalf of […]
“For those starting out in product, here’s a tip: Design, Defaults*, Documentation, Details and Delivery really matter in software.”Jeetu Patel here. * Note that you can interpret “Defaults” to be Out-Of-The-Box functionality offered by the product. Let’s break those 5 D-words down and describe why they really matter to the OSS industry shall we? Design […]
I’d love to ask you an important question… how do we benchmark OSS/BSS complexity? To measure how complex our systems are and therefore provide a signpost for simplification. A colleague has opined that the number of apps in a stack could be used a proxy. I can see where he’s going with that, but I […]
There’s an old adage that “the confused mind always says no.” Consider this from your own perspective. If you’re in a state of confusion about something, are you likely to commit wholeheartedly or will you look to delay / procrastinate? The paradox for digital transformation is that our projects are almost always complex, but complexity […]
In Monday’s article, we suggested that the three technical factors that could get the big boss fired are probably only limited to: Repeated and/or catastrophic failure (of network, systems, etc) Inability to serve the market (eg offerings, capacity, etc) Inability to operate network assets profitably In that article, we looked closely at a human factor […]
We’re excited to announce that “The Blue Book OSS/BSS Vendor Directory” has officially gone live here at https://passionateaboutoss.com/directory It provides a comprehensive directory of over 400 suppliers that produce OSS, BSS and/or related network management tools. Company details, product details and functionality classifications are included. Every network operator has a unique set of needs from […]
We’ve spoken at length about TM Forum’s, “Time to kill the RFP? Reinventing IT procurement for the 2020s,” report so far this week. We’ve also spoken about the feeling that the OSS/BSS RFP (Request For Proposal) still has relevance in some situations… as long as it’s more of a lighter-touch than most. We’ve spoken about […]
Yesterday’s post described the approach to get from 400+ possible OSS/BSS suppliers/products down to a more manageable list without: Having to get into significant discussions with vendors (yet) Gathering all your stakeholders together to prepare a detailed list of requirements We’ll call this “the long list,” which might consist of 5-20 suppliers. We use this […]
You may have noticed that we’ve run a series of posts about OSS/BSS procurement, and about the RFP process by association. One of the first steps in the traditional procurement process is preparing a strategy and detailed set of requirements. As TM Forum’s, “Time to kill the RFP? Reinventing IT procurement for the 2020s,” report describes: […]
As per yesterday’s post, I’ll continue to reference a TM Forum report called, “Time to kill the RFP? Reinventing IT procurement for the 2020s” today. Mark Newman and the team have captured and discussed so many layers to the OSS/BSS procurement process. There’s no doubt the current stereotypical RFP approach to procurement is broken. It […]
Earlier this year, the TM Forum published a really insightful report called, “Time to kill the RFP? Reinventing IT procurement for the 2020s.” There are so many layers to the OSS/BSS procurement discussion and Mark Newman and team have done a fantastic job of capturing them. We’ll expand on a few of those layers in […]
The industry we work in is worth tens of billions of dollars annually. We rely on that investment to fund the OSS/BSS projects (and ops/maintenance tasks) that keeps many thousands of us busy. Those funds originate from project sponsors in the buyers’ organisations taking a leap of faith in kicking off an OSS project. For […]
We’re going to look into assurance models of the past versus the changing assurance demands that are appearing these days. The diagrams below are highly stylised for discussion purposes so they’re unlikely to reflect actual implementations, but we’ll get to that. Under the old model, the heart of the OSS/BSS was the database (almost exclusively […]
“There’s the famous quote that if you want to understand how animals live, you don’t go to the zoo, you go to the jungle. The Future Lab has really pioneered that within Lego, and it hasn’t been a theoretical exercise. It’s been a real design-thinking approach to innovation, which we’ve learned an awful lot from.” […]
