So what’s the risk with SDN?
“We deceive ourselves when we fancy that only weakness needs support. Strength needs it far more.” Anne Sophie Swetchine. We’ve been extolling the virtues of SDN for some time now. But how about possible weaknesses? In an earlier post entitled Carrier SDN we discussed the potential reduction in time to market (TTM) in a software […]
$172B Revenue Loss
“According to a research report published by Telco 2.0, telecom companies across the globe could lose up to $172 Billion in revenues from voice and messaging services [on a $375 billion base over the next five years].” Digital Service Cloud. In a nutshell, that’s $172B that won’t be available to be invested in big-budget transformational […]
Carrier SDN
“Carriers could have a couple of different viewpoints [on SDN]. One is we’ve gotta do something on our equipment costs because they’re not going down as fast as traffic is going up. Others say I want to compete with the data centre operators, the cloud providers. Others say I just want greater service velocity. I […]
More structural holes
“…When the familiar pen-and-paper methods of self-analysis are enhanced by sensors that monitor our behavior automatically, the process of self-tracking becomes both more alluring and more meaningful.” Gary Wolf. In yesterday’s blog, we presented this image, which shows the gaps in EMC’s social networks that prevent “perfect” information flow across their orgnas. The other message […]
Big ticket OSS
“Always give more in use value than what you take in cash value.” Wallace D. Wattles. What does this mean exactly? Well, in the context of an OSS, it basically means that the CSP gets more value from their OSS than what they’ve paid a supplier / integrator for it. Given that OSS are big […]
OSS SMAC-down
“Wherever I see people doing something the way it’s always been done, the way it’s ‘supposed’ to be done, following the same old trends, well, that’s just a big red flag to me to go look somewhere else.” Mark Cuban. Has your OSS been SMAC-ed yet? Social Mobility Analytics (Big Data) Cloud (and Virtualisation) Have […]
Pareto Listening
“Sometimes, we’re so eager to have an opinion that we skip the step of working to understand.” Seth Godin. I’m currently reading “Power Listening – Mastering the Most Critical Business Skill of All” by Bernard Ferrari. In it, the author speaks of applying the Pareto Principle to listening. In other words, spending 80% of the […]
Reducing choices
“Ultimatums rarely work because we react to the emotion instead of responding intelligently. On the other hand, giving your partner… a choice between two outcomes is a generous act, a form of truth-telling that helps both of you.” Seth Godin. One of the many things expected of a consultant is to add new insights into […]
Shiny and new vs BAU
“Our brains, our bodies, our teams, and our organizational systems are not set up to tear things down and create things at the same time. Each requires different ways of thinking and doing that are contrary to the way work happens and how people behave within these systems.” Christine Chopyak in her book, “Picture Your […]
Augmented technicians
“Google has a plan. Eventually it wants to get into your brain. “When you think about something and don’t really know much about it, you will automatically get information,” Google CEO Larry Page said in Steven Levy’s book, “In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes Our Lives.” “Eventually you’ll have an implant, where […]
M2M Management
“The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Many are wondering what the M2M acronym means for their OSS. M2M, or Machine to Machine, is sometimes touted as one possible saviour for CSPs that are losing revenues from their traditional cash cows […]
An SDN roadmap
“Innovation accelerates and compounds. Each point in front of you is bigger than anything that ever happened.” Marc Andreessen. Regular readers / subscribers of this blog have noticed that SDN / NFV (Software Defined Networking and Network Function Virtualisation) has been a regular topic of conversation because it has the potential to revolutionise not just […]
An OSS takes flight
“Heights by great men reached and kept were not obtained by sudden flight but, while their companions slept, they were toiling upward in the night.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 110 years ago today, the Wright Brothers made the first manned flight, a well known story. Not quite so well known is the story of Samuel Langley, […]
A Customer’s Experience part 2
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” Peter Drucker. In yesterday’s blog we discussed the trend of carrier’s focussing on Customer Experience Management, specifically the results of a Comarch study on mobility carriers. There are so many aspects of CEM […]
Virtualisation meets Big Data
“When a match has equal partners then I fear not.” Aeschylus. The major OSS of the nineties and noughties can be categorised as centralised, structured (ie built on relational databases and modelling connection-oriented services) and not-quite-realtime. I envisage the next generation will be distributed, unstructured (ie virtualised and with rapid shifts in data sources) and […]
Hoarders
“We are not cisterns made for hoarding, we are channels made for sharing.” Billy Graham. Have you ever stopped to wonder why most CSP’s OSS are so complex? Put simply, they are almost all hoarders. They collect services, device types, management systems, data, interfaces, etc. But how often do they ever discard one? Even when […]
Why is virtualisation a game changer?
“Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer are called hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse at are called software.” Anonymous. Virtualisation of the network (read SDN, NFV, etc) is a game changer for OSS. To follow the anonymous quote above, most current OSS are great at managing […]
What can Zara teach your B/OSS?
“Inditex (the owner of the Zara fashion brand) has weathered the global economic downturn better than rivals like H&M as its “fast fashion” model has allowed it to be more responsive to changing consumer demand, while its focus on the latest trends has made it less vulnerable to the rise of discounters like Primark.” Thomson […]
Ask forgiveness later
“It is often easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.” Grace Hopper. There are many barriers to delivering an OSS, often built up from the rules of the organisations involved. Sometimes the rules make sense. Other times, rules (and the people responsible for enforcing these rules) just prevent progress. The best implementers […]
Unlimited OSS mileage
“When you rent a car with unlimited mileage and a full tank of gas, how far are you willing to go? You’re only limited by desire and time. The web feels that way to me. You can share as many secrets, ask as many questions, write as many blog posts as you can dream up. […]