Managing the managed services

“Managed services are one of the areas where CSPs still hold sway because they are able to provide the diversity of voice, date, video, collaboration, etc and geographical coverage that the niche players can’t. As such, this is a very important revenue source to CSPs where their old cash-cows (eg voice, ISDN, etc) are drying […]

A rapid growth field

“To be successful you have to be lucky, or a little mad, or very talented, or find yourself in a rapid growth field.” Edward de Bono. Regular readers will have seen my regular references to valuable tripods in the OSS world. They are the few who are able to make valuable connections across the following three domains: […]

Are you ready to become obsolete?

“One of the most important skills I have found in leaders and candidates is what is often called “learning agility.” Learning Agility, a term coined by psychologists, simply describes your ability to rapidly learn new things.” Josh Bersin, here. Fig 1: Oxford Economics – SAP 2014 Talent Research Do you think the stat in the […]

Software in silicon

“The latest innovation with far-reaching implications for system performance is something called “software in silicon.” The concept is exactly as it sounds—putting software right into the chip for better, even faster performance.” John Soat on Forbes.com. As anyone who has worked with an OSS that has a large database can attest, OSS performance can be […]

Bathtub curve

“The bathtub curve is widely used in reliability engineering. It describes a particular form of the hazard function which comprises three parts: – The first part is a decreasing failure rate, known as early failures. – The second part is a constant failure rate, known as random failures. – The third part is an increasing […]

Cloudification threatens OSS and BSS

“For companies like VM Ware and Microsoft no-one predicted that one of their biggest threats would come from an online book retailer, yet Amazon Web Services has upended the entire software industry. The challenges for VM Ware today or Apple nearly two decades ago are being repeated in many other industries as competitors appear from […]

ITSM, DCIM and OSS

“I like your comparison between DCIM (Data Centre Infrastructure Management) and OSS. Do you see ITSM tools as a 3rd market or do you combine this with DCIM? I believe that traditional OSS will get challenged by ITSM as the telco service portfolio at least for enterprise customers will be more and more dominated by […]

Value chain

“A value fabric is a mesh of interwoven, cooperating organizations and individuals collectively called parties. The value fabric shows the interaction among collaborating parties.” Back in the first week of August 2014, we covered a series of blogs that discussed how OSS can provide supply chain differentiation and competitive advantages. Following this series, Evan Linwood […]

Pieces of the provisioning puzzle

“The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity.” Douglas Horton. Consolidated service orchestration requires you to solve the puzzle of complexity and deliver a wonderfully simple, repeatable engine for your operations team. It looks simple and it sounds simple, but the following list provides just a handful of the pre-requisite tasks you’ll need to […]

Internet of Things is exploding

“The internet already connects everyone and it’s about to connect everything. The ubiquity of always-on connectivity, the declining price and increasing versatility of sensors, and the benefits of remote information and control is prompting a new generation of devices ranging from doorknobs to thermostats to refridgerators to lightbulbs. From the largest technology and manufacturing companies to […]

International mergers

“The world’s telecommunications market with its national fiefdoms, loose market deregulation, over-bearing government regulation and occasional fierce competition lends itself to M&A as a means of growing, and sometimes sustaining revenues, by accessing new markets. Whilst telcos still have cash they are better positioned to buy in foreign markets as their own markets may see […]

Branding your Lexus OSS

“It’s one thing to be a ahead of your time. It’s another to change the future.” Lexus. Do telcos need differentiated prestige brands, in much the same way as Lexus is to Toyota? Do they need to differentiate their bit and byte businesses from solution integration and again from apps/content, etc? Telcos tend to be […]

OSS Skunk-works

“Executive consultant at specialist software development consultancy ThoughtWorks Leslie Barry says the skunk works division becomes a safe place for experimentation. “You do that to attract a different culture that wants to try new things, get stuff done and get it out there faster,” Barry says. “It is about attracting smart, engaged people and giving […]

OSS Supply chain – Shift No. 4

“Shift No. 4: From Single-Company Product Design to Collaborative, Concurrent Product, Process and Supply-Chain Design. OLD QUESTION: How should or company design products to minimise product cost (our cost of materials, production and distribution)? NEW QUESTION: How should collaborators design the product, process and supply chain to minimise costs?” Laura Ross Kopczak and M. Eric […]

OSS Supply chain – Shift No. 2

“Shift No. 2: From Physical Efficiency to Market Mediation. OLD QUESTION: How do we minimise the costs our company incurs in production and distribution of our products? NEW QUESTION: How do we minimise the costs of matching supply with demand while continuing to reduce the costs of production and distribution?” Laura Ross Kopczak and M. […]

OSS Supply-chain Management

“Supplying product to meet demand goes well beyond the question – Did we ship what the customer wanted today? It includes more strategic questions such as – How well do we work with our partners? Are we first to market with our new products? Do we embrace product variety or do we limit it because […]

What can your CFO do with an OSS?

“The CFO and his or her finance staff must be attuned to the drivers of the business, and must be able to work closely with operations management as well as with executive management to chart the financial and strategic impacts of prospective growth strategies.” CFO Research Services. As we often discuss, an OSS is no […]

Siphoning Value

“Is your company focused on creating value — or on siphoning it off from others? Capturing value from other stakeholders by manipulating the competitive market process to the company’s advantage exposes a company to reputational or legal risks. It also can undermine corporate values. Value extraction is typically easier than developing a competitive advantage through […]

Backtracking

“Social TV app Zeebox (recently rebranded as Beamly) thought it was doing the right thing by moving from a tabbed interface to a navigation drawer, but the results were catastrophic — customer engagement dropped by half! Zeebox scrambled to issue an update that restored the tabbed UI. A second attempt proved equally disastrous. What started […]

The Lego analogy

“Its supply chains were long and expensive – at one stage with 11,000 contractors Lego had more suppliers than Boeing used to build its aircraft! And its product development had become increasingly complex, with many product ranges involving such a wide range of choice – for example the Pirate figures had no less than 10 […]