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.
“On Monday this week taxi app Lyft raising a new $1bn round which included $500m from General Motors. Twelve months ago the received wisdom was that Uber was on a tear and it’s competitors would fail and in response to this funding news LA Times wrote a piece questioning whether the ‘winner takes all phenomenon’ that […]
Do end customers buy bandwidth off CSPs because they really want a data service? No? To deliver entertainment services; to deliver communications with friends, family and customers; to deliver learnIng; to facilitate shopping; to spread an organisation’s selling messages across multiple channels and provide near-real-time response metrics on each; to build marketplaces; to deliver; to […]
“You’ve got Amazon knowing everything about purchasing, Google knowing everything about what people do on the Internet, and Salesforce knowing everything about the revenue side of a business.” Scott Raney. The big question for CSPs as they make the transition to the more modern Digital Service Provider (DSP) business models is, “what big thing can […]
OSS has a bad name amongst many of our customers. Yes, even though they invest billions in our industry each year. Do they consider us a necessary evil? Quality, dependability, repeatability. These are the catch-cries of success in many industries. TGW (things gone wrong) per million or per thousand are common metrics that are the bellweather […]
“Are you an expert at something that actually generates value?” Seth Godin in a recent post called, “No direction home.” Seth’s post is actually about finding a job in a different way than most people try, one that I’m also a big advocate of. The quote above though is a very philosophical one for all […]
“If you’re already doing everything online on your smartphone anyway, why pay for home broadband service? That seems to be the conclusion of a growing number of Americans, particularly Millennials. According to the Pew Research Center, as charted here for us by Statista, the percentage of U.S. adults with home broadband has declined over the […]
Your first answer to the headline question today will probably relate to Bitcoin transactions. That would indeed be a clever answer but there is more potential in blockchain for OSS / BSS than just crypto-currencies. I figure that it could be applicable for the following use cases and probably many more: Obviously billing reconciliation (and […]
“…our research suggests that as many as 45 percent of the activities individuals are paid to perform can be automated by adapting currently demonstrated technologies. In the United States, these activities represent about $2 trillion in annual wages. Although we often think of automation primarily affecting low-skill, low-wage roles, we discovered that even the highest-paid […]
What does your OSS mean to your business (or your customer’s business if you’re a vendor / installer)? In the upper echelons of the business, OSS are often seen as being a significant financial burden but a necessary evil, a means to an end (or any other negative cliché you’d like to throw in). But how do […]
“Which 10 technologies do we need that haven’t been invented yet?” In no particular order: Automated checking and correlation of outside plant (and any other data source that doesn’t have programmable interfaces) Order to cash tools for customers of CSPs, not just for the CSPs in the usual use of this metric Knowledge transfer between […]
“Which 10 nascent technologies will impact and be impacted by OSS in the future?” Cloud delivery and related services models that allow carriers to reduce their OSS CAPEX load and outsource aspects of operations. The other important aspect of cloud delivery is web-scaling of infrastructure for efficient, but resilient OSS platform architectures Network virtualization for […]
James Altucher’s Idea Machine concept will form the basis of a series of upcoming posts. An earlier post, “Just 10 ideas” posed 10 questions, one being “What are the 10 things that you’d like to get better at?” From that question, and each of the other questions, I’ll attempt to generate 10 ideas. So, the […]
In yesterday’s post, “Just 10 ideas“, I talked about James Altucher’s “Idea Machine,” of coming up with 10 ideas every day, regardless of whether they’re good or not. I took a slightly different twist on the concept and posed a series of 10 questions, which in turn will probably have at least 10 idea responses. […]
“You can’t trust the old style of thinking anymore. You have to come up with a new way of thinking. A new way of having ideas. A new way of interacting with the outside universe.” James Altucher. I’m currently reading James Altucher’s latest book. It has nothing to do with OSS but it has a […]
“This Industry Will Be Won & Lost In the Next Three Years” John Chambers on Light Reading. Many of you will have noticed the recent partnership between Ericsson and Cisco. You will probably have noticed that they’re talking of partnership rather than merger due to the speed in which they can move. As they rightly […]
“A need to differentiate products and services in the market is forcing greater specialisation. Specialist organisations that do one or two things well will naturally rely more on partnerships. At the same time, other companies have little time to both develop similar expertise internally and keep pace with technology-driven changes in their own industry or […]
Whether you have a simple residential telco service or have a large organisation with a correspondingly large managed services contract, it’s most likely that the CSP’s contact centre staff are the front-line responders to any queries or concerns you have. In many cases, they’re the only staff that are responding. In the modern era of […]
“I got a laugh at a conference back in the past when I commented that to the media, any new technology had to be either the single-handed savior of western culture, or the last bastion of international communism. Anything in between wasn’t going to generate clicks on the pieces, and it was too complicated to […]
“Imagine that it’s Winter, you’re walking in the forest, and you see a frozen pond with a hundred people skating on it. Now, imagine walking past the same pond with nobody, or just one person skating on it. Would you be more likely to go skating on the pond in the first case or in […]
“A contingency plan is a plan devised for an outcome other than in the usual (expected) plan.” Websters dictionary. This week we’ve used the metaphors of black swans, elephants in the room and boiling frogs to highlight some of the challenges that could be faced by the OSS industry. Once you’ve gone through your own […]
