OSS are tools have a big part to play in modern ICT organisations. They can make the difference between effective or ineffective operations of electronic assets. The Executive Series of blogs provide information that is targeted for senior executives on how to utilise OSS to deliver better business outcomes.
As the title suggests, this is the third in a series of articles spawned by TM Forum’s initiative to investigate better procurement practices than using RFI / RFP processes. There’s no doubt the RFI / RFP / contract model can be costly and time-consuming. To be honest, I feel the RFI / RFP process can […]
Yesterday’s post discussed an initiative that TM Forum is currently investigating – trying to identify an alternate OSS procurement process to the traditional RFI/RFP/contract approach. It spoke about trusting partnerships being the (possibly) mythological key to killing off the RFP. Have you noticed how much fear there is going into any OSS procurement event? Fear […]
TM Forum is currently investigating ways to procure OSS without resorting to the current RFI / RFP approach. It has published the following survey results. . As it shows, the RFI / RFP isn’t fit for purpose for suppliers and customers alike. It’s not just the RFI/RFP process. We could extend this further and include […]
The diagram below comes from an actual client’s functionality usage profile. The x-axis shows the functionality / use-cases. The y-axis shows the number of uses (it could equally represent usefulness or value). Each big-impact demand (ie individual bars on the left-side of the graph) warrants separate investigation. The bars on the right side (ie the […]
Earlier this week we posted an article describing Sutton’s Law of OSS, which effectively tells us to go where the money is. The article suggested that in OSS we instead tend towards the exact opposite – the inverse-Sutton – we go to where the money isn’t. Instead of robbing banks like Willie Sutton, we break […]
Willie Sutton was an accomplished bank robber, particularly during the 1920s and 1930. Named after Willie, Sutton’s Law effectively states, “I go to where the money is,” which was supposedly Sutton’s response to a reporter’s question asking why he robbed banks instead of easier targets. Interestingly for the OSS industry, we seem to follow the […]
“If we start to focus on ourselves, instead of focusing on our customers, that will be the beginning of the end … We have to try and delay that day for as long as possible.” Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos recently predicted that Amazon is likely to fail and/or go bankrupt at some point in time, […]
Yesterday’s post described the ways in which Telkomsel has strategically changed their value-chain to attract revenues with greater premiums than the traditional model of a telco. They’ve used a new digital core and an API framework to help facilitate their business model transformation. As promised yesterday, we’ll take a slightly closer look at the culture […]
The following two slides were presented by Monty Hong of Indonesia’s Telkomsel at Digital Transformation Asia 2018 last week. They provide a fascinating insight into the changing landscape of comms revenues that providers are grappling with globally and the associated systems decisions that Telkomsel has made. The first shows the drastic declines in revenues from […]
I’ve just had a really interesting first day at TM Forum’s Digital Transformation Asia (https://dta.tmforum.org and #tmfdigitalasia ). The quality of presentations was quite high. Some great thought-provoking ideas!! Nik Willetts kicked off his keynote with the following quote, which I’m paraphrasing, “Telcos need to start capturing value, not just creating it as they have […]
““If you asked me how to sell cybersecurity, I wouldn’t call it cybersecurity.” The raw truth of the statement hit me like a lightning bolt between the eyes. Cybersecurity might loosely describe what we do, and we tell people it’s what we’re selling, but it’s not what people buy. Safety. Assurance. Peace of mind. Confidence. […]
Friday’s post discussed three analogies about the challenges of performing an OSS pivot. The biggest challenge in initiating the transformation / replacement of any significant OSS is fear. There are many OSS out there whose “owners” want to change and need to change… but fear changing because a significant pivot would mean a “sell the […]
As you already know, the word pivot has become common in the world of business, particularly the world of start-ups. It’s a euphemism for a significant change in strategic direction. In the context of today’s post, I love the word pivot because it implies a rapid change in direction, something that’s seemingly impossible for […]
Build it and they will come. This is not always true for OSS. Let me recount a few examples. The project team is disconnected from the users – The team that’s building the OSS in parallel to existing operations doesn’t (or isn’t able to) engage with the end users of the OSS. Once it comes […]
There’s a common belief that most jobs see people rewarded for presence rather than performance. That is, they’re encouraged to be on site from 9am to 5pm rather than being given free reign over their work schedules as long as key outcomes are met / exceeded. In OSS vendor / product selection there’s a similar […]
Automation is about using machines / algorithms to respond faster than humans can, or more efficiently than humans can, or more accurately than humans can… but only if the outcomes justify the costs. When it comes to automations, it’s a case of, “just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.” The more complex the decision […]
“Apple became the first company to be worth a trillion dollars. They did that by spending five years single-mindedly focusing on doing profitable work. They’ve consistently pushed themselves toward high margin luxury goods and avoided just about everything else. Belying their first two decades, when they focused on breakthrough work that was difficult and perhaps […]
“Network slicing opens new business opportunities for operators by enabling them to provide specialized services that deliver specific performance parameters. Guaranteeing stringent KPIs enables operators to charge premium rates to customers that value such performance. The flip side is that such agreements will inevitably come with tough contractual obligations and penalties when the agreed KPIs […]
“ONAP provides a comprehensive platform for real-time, policy-driven orchestration and automation of physical and virtual network functions that will enable software, network, IT and cloud providers and developers to rapidly automate new services and support complete lifecycle management. By unifying member resources, ONAP is accelerating the development of a vibrant ecosystem around a globally shared […]
“The iPhone disrupted the handset business, but has not disrupted the cellular network operators at all, though many people were convinced that it would. For all that’s changed, the same companies still have the same business model and the same customers that they did in 2006. Online flight booking doesn’t disrupt airlines much, but it […]
