OSS are all about helping the customer in some way
I was lucky enough to get some time of a friend recently, a friend who’s running a machine-learning network assurance proof-of-concept (PoC). He’s been really impressed with the results coming out of the PoC. However, one of the really interesting factors he’s been finding is how frequently BAU (business as usual) changes in the OSS […]
We all know that revenue per bit (of data transferred across comms networks) is trending lower. How could we not? It’s posited as one of the reasons for declining profitability of the industry. The challenge for telcos is how to engineer an environment of low revenue per bit but still be cost viable. I’m sure […]
One of the biggest challenges of big bang OSS project implementations is that all of the business value (ie the OSS and its data, workflows, integrations, etc) gets delivered at once, normally at the end of a lengthy exercise. Ok, ok, so the delivery of value is not a challenge, it’s the implications of a […]
It’s interesting how we tend to go in cycles. Back in the early days of OSS, the network operators tended to build their OSS from the ground up. Then we went through a phase of using Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) OSS software developed by third-party vendors. We now seem to be cycling back towards in-house development, […]
There’s a concept in sales called “risk reversal” that takes all of the customers’ likely issues with a product and provides answers to alleviate customer concerns. I believe we can apply the same concept to OSS, not just to sell them, but to design them. To borrow from a risk register page here on PAOSS, the […]
Last week we discussed a sell-side co-op business model. Today we’ll look at buy-side co-op models. In other industries, we hear of buying groups getting great deals through aggregated buying volumes. This is a little harder to achieve with products that are as uniquely customised as OSS. It’s possible that OSS buy-side aggregation could occur […]
“One business customer, for example, may require ultra-reliable services, whereas other business customers may need ultra-high-bandwidth communication or extremely low latency. The 5G network needs to be designed to be able to offer a different mix of capabilities to meet all these diverse requirements at the same time. From a functional point of view, the […]
A recent blog from Seth Godin brought back some memories from a past project. “Two ways to solve a problem and provide a service. With drama. Make sure the customer knows just how hard you’re working, what extent you’re going to in order to serve. Make a big deal out of the special order, the […]
A recent post discussed the challenge of getting a timeslice of operations people to help build the OSS. That post surmised, “as the old saying goes, you get back what you put in. In the case of OSS I’ve seen it time and again that operations need to contribute significantly to the implementation to ensure […]
Can you guess what automated OSS testing and OSS new starters have in common? Both are best front-loaded. As a consultant, I’ve been a new starter on many occasions, as well as being assigned new starters on probably even more occasions. From both sides of that fence, it’s far more effective to front-load the new […]
“When you’ve got multiple powerful parties involved in a decision, compromise is unavoidable. The point is not that compromise is a necessary evil. Rather, compromise can be valuable in itself, because it demonstrates that you’ve made use of diverse opinions, which is a way of limiting risk.” Chip and Dan Heath in their book, Decisive. […]
When we have a big OSS transformation to undertake, we tend to start with the use cases / requirements, work our way through the technical solution and build up an implementation plan before delivering it (yes, I’ve heavily reduced the real number of steps there!). However, we sometimes overlook the organisational change management part. That’s […]
“The myth is that people play games because they want to avoid challenging work. The reality is, people play games to engage in well-designed, challenging work. The only thing they are avoiding is poorly designed work. In essence, we are replacing poorly designed work with work that provides a more meaningful challenge and offers a […]
“Sometimes a simple question deserves a simple answer: “A piece of string is twice as long as half its length”. This is a brilliant answer… if you have its length… Without a strategy, how do you know if it is successful? It might be prettier, but is it solving a define business problem, saving or […]
For network operators, our OSS and BSS touch most parts of the business. The network, and the services they carry, are core business so a majority of business units will be contributing to that core business. As such, our OSS and BSS provide many of the metrics used by those business units. This is a […]
“You cannot simply have your end users give some specifications then leave while you attempt to build your new system. They need to be involved throughout the process. Ultimately, it is their tool to use.” José Manuel De Arce here. As an OSS consultant and implementer, I couldn’t agree more with José’s quote above. José, […]
We all know the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears where Goldilocks chooses the option that’s not too heavy, not too light, but just right. The same model applies to OSS – finding / building a solution that’s not too heavy, not too light, but just right. To be honest, we probably tend to […]
“There are ratings and rankings that ostensibly exist to give us information (and we are supposed to use that information to change our behavior). But if we don’t know what variables matter, how is it supposed to be useful? Just because it can be easily measured with two digits doesn’t mean that it’s accurate, important […]
“Google has started applying its artificial intelligence (AI) expertise to network operations and expects to make its tools available to companies building virtual networks on its global cloud platform. That could be a troubling sign for network technology vendors such as Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC), Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK), which […]
“The actions taken by the telecom industry have mostly been around cost cutting, both in terms of opex and capex, and that has not resulted in breaking the curve. Too few activities has been centered around revenue growth, such as focused activities in personalization, customer experience, segmentation, targeted offerings that become part of or drive […]
