OSS are all about helping the customer in some way
“A double-byte character set (DBCS) is a character encoding in which either all characters (including control characters) are encoded in two bytes, or merely every graphic character not representable by an accompanying single-byte character set (SBCS) is encoded in two bytes… A DBCS supports national languages that contain a large number of unique characters or […]
“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. […]
“It’s not what you pay a man, but what he costs you that counts.” Will Rogers. Similarly, it’s not what you pay for an OSS but what it costs that counts. Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is a useful model when evaluating OSS projects because it considers the direct and indirect costs (CAPEX and OPEX) […]
“Always have a “higher authority” that you have to “check with” before you can make a decision. This ensures both that you will have more time to think about the deal, and that you will be able to put more pressure on the other party without leading to confrontation (as you do not appear to […]
“You have to motivate yourself with challenges. That’s how you know you’re still alive.” Jerry Seinfeld. One of my early OSS projects started off like a rocket. It was a big win, enough to send the OSS vendor to an IPO (Initial Public Offering) that was very successful initially. It was also big enough to […]
“Being selective — doing less — is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.” Tim Ferriss. When speaking with a great friend of mine today, Eddie, I came to the startling realisation that in nearly 700 blog posts, I have forgotten to speak about a major misgiving that […]
“Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.” John Wooden. An attribute of many games is the ability to fail, get back up and try again in a slightly different way. If you fail again, you keep getting back up and trying again in slightly different ways, getting better at the game each […]
“Always speak politely to an enraged dragon.” Steven Brust. Regular readers will have noticed my penchant for referring to the Pareto Principle (aka the 80/20 rule). I’m a big believer in focusing on streamlining the high-use or highly important items of OSS implementations. OSS are simply too big and too complex to get bogged down […]
AT&T creates $500M joint venture for a Netflix-style TV service AT&T, America’s second largest broadband provider and wireless company, is getting into the streaming business with a $500 million joint venture created to acquire, invest in and launch a Netflix-style video streaming service. As the television distribution model that’s been in place for decades collapses […]
“Our communications services revenue growth is being driven by continued strong top-line performance in data, Internet and international – three of the fastest growing and most profitable areas within communications services.” Bernard Ebbers. For those of you who don’t know, Bernie Ebbers was the CEO of WorldCom. He was also convicted of fraud and conspiracy […]
“Datafication” is a new term used to describe the process of turning an existing business into a “data business.” Bersin. We’ve had industrialisation and digitalisation. Are we already on the brink of a new business model mindset? Datafication. Many industries are now producing and storing prodigious amounts of data, of which OSS is one of […]
“In vain have you acquired knowledge if you have not imparted it to others.” Deuteronomy Rabbah. When implementing an OSS for a customer, I love getting hold of their real data because then their environment seems to become clearer. The more aspects of the data you investigate, the more the flower unfurls. The more their […]
“To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.” George MacDonald. In yesterday’s blog, we spoke of the shades of grey that different users feel on the spectrum of free services versus secure/private services. We also spoke of the potential strategic advantage held by many traditional CSPs compared with their relatively newer Internet (OTT) […]
“If you’re not paying for it (an app or service), you’re not the customer; you’re the product.” Adage. Declines in revenues from traditional services have CSPs scrambling to identify new revenue streams, often through very lateral approaches. The massive databases held by CSPs are one of their biggest assets even if they don’t appear on […]
“I don’t like to be out of my comfort zone, which is about a half an inch wide.” Larry David. There are still many organisations, even CSPs, that manage their customers and networks from their network equipment vendors. Blend in some spreadsheets and cross-domain tools like SolarWinds in combination with CRM, financial planning, etc and […]
“Win-win is a belief in the Third Alternative. It’s not your way or my way : it’s a better way.” Stephen Covey. The following image has been circulating the Internet and it got me thinking about its implications to OSS. There are many who would believe that there are three kinds of OSS and you […]
“We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.” Albert Camus. This paper entitled “Predicting people personality using novel mobile phone-based metrics” by de Montjoye, et al provides evidence that user personality can be predicted with reliability* from CDR (Call Data Record) data that’s available to all […]
“Things get done only if the data we gather can inform and inspire those in a position to make [a] difference.” Mike Schmoker. I’m possibly having a major brain-fade here (again), but the only two ways I can think of for extracting information from your OSS are: Via your OSS GUI (Graphical User Interface) Via […]
“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” Winston Churchill. Michael Porter’s famous Five Forces Model, shown below, is the basis for our review of the OSS industry today. The five forces are: Threat of new entrants: There are a large number of incumbent providers of OSS solutions and the market is […]
“Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light.” Vera Nazarian. After lots of writing and refining, my book, which is dedicated to OSS implementations, is almost finished. It’s based around 22 commonly asked questions, particularly by readers who are relatively new to OSS. It also allows readers […]
