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
“I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.” Michael Jordan. Regular readers of this blog will have recollections of previous discussions about setting up a sandpit environment for customers. A couple of examples are here (building sandcastles) and here (lose your fear in a sandpit). There a few different […]
“Just like any product, an open API needs a business justification, user personas, clear use cases, a roadmap, a revenue model, a pre- and post-launch plan, and specific needs in the areas of marketing, sales, support, documentation, and security. These needs are completely separate from those of your core product, though they should be strategically […]
“In today’s cloud computing world, many Product Managers will be faced with the decision of whether to open an API to their users. Open APIs have many advantages, but they also bring significant business challenges. In this post, I describe key benefits and challenges of open APIs, and why Product Managers should treat an open […]
“Regression testing means re-testing an application after its code has been modified to verify that it still functions correctly. Regression testing consists of re-running existing test cases and checking that code changes did not break any previously working functions, inadvertently introduce errors or cause earlier fixed issues to reappear. These test cases should be run […]
“We are made out of oppositions; we live between two poles. There is a philistine and an aesthete in all of us, and a murderer and a saint. You don’t reconcile the poles. You just recognize them.” Orson Welles. One of the holy grails of OSS – automation – has many forms. Whether it is […]
“When integrators bid on a deal, deployment [using an ALF] tool will be easier because you’re not tied to any proprietary standard..” Kevin Parker. Mikey, a reader of PAOSS, recently asked a great set of questions, as follows: “What do you think are the biggest challenges in a multi-vendor OSS. More importantly, did you see […]
“Life is full of surprises and serendipity. Being open to unexpected turns in the road is an important part of success. If you try to plan every step, you may miss those wonderful twists and turns.” Condoleeza Rice. Product and Service Lifecycle Management (PSLM) can be a key differentiator* for competing CSPs. In turn, the […]
“While humans are not good at processing systems models, we are much better at analysing and designing them. This leads to a natural human-computer partnership.” Mark Zangari. In yesterday’s blog we discussed a lecture by Mark Zangari about Decision Support Systems (DSS). Mark’s quote above is a really interesting one in the context of CSP […]
“I’ve always believed there are moments in our lives which can be defined as a transition between the before and after, between the cause and the effect.” Benjamin X. Wretlind. Many of you will be familiar with the after-hours or overnight cutovers where you make changes to your organisation’s infrastructure (eg applications, servers, networks, etc) […]
“APIs are everywhere today and can be a great building block of modern applications. But all too often APIs are not truly great. Rather than love your API, developers curse it.” John Musser in relation to this slide deck. Yesterday’s post was about the importance of having an API that’s easy to integrate with for […]
When you curate a website / blog called PassionateAboutOSS, it’s pretty obvious that you would see the world through OSS-tinted glasses. The tech-world at least. And so it has been for me when evaluating new comms network / service concepts like SDN / NFV. It’s been a case of, “that all sounds really exciting and […]
“When times get confusing, it’s easy to revert to the habits that got you here. More often than not, that’s precisely the wrong approach. The very thing that got you here is the thing that everyone who’s here is doing, and if that’s what it took to get to the next level, no one would […]
“If the primary aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever.” Thomas Aquinas. As we all know, OSS projects can be complex behemoths that have as many people-related issues as technically-related issues. More so than on most projects, OSS project sponsors need to be involved. They can’t […]
“I don’t understand this irony – valuable things like cars, gold, diamond are made up of hard materials but most valuable things like money, contracts and books are made up of soft paper.” Amit Kalantri. When planning out a new OSS project, I generally focus on three things first: People (who is involved, who will […]
My OSS book, entitled “Mastering your OSS” is finally available to the market. Click on the image below to take a closer look. For the next two weeks only, I’m offering an extra US$10 off the purchase price to readers of this blog. Just send me an email or a note via the Contact Page […]
“Here we have a baby. It is composed of a bald head and a pair of lungs.” Eugene Field. Many of you by now have seen the freight-train of network virtualisation (cloud, SDN, NFV) rapidly approaching the Telco space. Many in the communications technology world are salivating at the opportunity to leverage cloud-style concepts such […]
“Cognitive psychology has shown that the mind best understands facts when they are woven into a conceptual fabric, such as a narrative, mental map, or intuitive theory. Disconnected facts in the mind are like unlinked pages on the Web: They might as well not exist.” Steven Pinker. A number of colleagues and I attended a […]
“I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you […]
“I’m high maintenance, but I’m worth it.” Lara Logan. Funny. Does this ring true for OSS too? 😀 Network and equipment maintenance causes quite a few dilemmas for OSS products and their operators too. Here are a few tips to consider: Performing maintenance or network topology change often causes an alarm storm for the operators […]
“Multi-tenancy is an architecture in which a single instance of a software application serves multiple customers. Each customer is called a tenant. Tenants may be given the ability to customize some parts of the application, such as color of the user interface ( UI) or business rules, but they cannot customize the application’s code.” WhatIs.com. […]
