OSS are tools that help to make lives easier for CSP users and their customers. Here I present ideas for new OSS tools or innovations
It’s been nearly two decades since I designed my first root-cause analysis (RCA) rule. It was completely reliant on network topology – more specifically, it relied on a network hierarchy to determine which alarms could be suppressed. I had a really interesting discussion today with some colleagues who are using much more modern RCA techniques. […]
“Life can be improved by adding, or by subtracting. The world pushes us to add, because that benefits them. But the secret is to focus on subtracting… No amount of adding will get me where I want to be. The adding mindset is deeply ingrained. It’s easy to think I need something else. It’s hard […]
The last few days have been all about organisational structuring to support OSS and digital transformations. Today we take a different tack – a more technical diversion – onto how drones might be relevant to the field of OSS. A friend recently asked for help to look into the use of drones in his archaeological […]
In yesterday’s article, we discussed 7 models for achieving startup-like efficiency on large OSS transformations. One popular approach is to build a proof-of-concept or sandpit quickly on cloud hosting or in lab environments. It’s fast for a number of reasons including reduced number of approvals, faster activation of infrastructure, reduced safety checks (eg security, privacy, […]
In the last two posts, we’ve discussed repeatability within the field of OSS implementation – paint-by-numbers vs artisans and then resilience vs precision in delivery practices. Now I’d like you to have a think about how those posts overlay onto this quote by Karl Popper: “Non-reproducible single occurrences are of no significance to science.” Every […]
By now I’m sure you’ve heard about graph databases. You may’ve even read my earlier article about the benefits graph databases offer when modelling network inventory when compared with relational databases. But have you heard the Graphene Database Analogy? It can help conceptualise the migrating, cross-linking and fixing of data sets. I equate OSS data […]
“You don’t get differential advantage from your products, it’s from the way you speak to and relate to your customers . All products are excellent these days.” The quote above paraphrases Malcolm McDonald from a podcast about his book, “Malcolm McDonald on Value Propositions: How to Develop Them, How to Quantify Them.” This quote had […]
Have you ever experienced an epic customer experience (CX) fail when dealing a network service operator, like the one I described yesterday? In that example, the OSS/BSS, and possibly the associated people / process, had a direct impact on poor customer experience. Admittedly, that 7 truck-roll experience was a number of years ago now. We […]
Have you seen OSS tools where the applications are brilliant but consigned to failure by bad data? I definitely have! I call it the data death spiral. It’s a well known fact in the industry that bad data can ruin an OSS. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. But how many companies […]
The diagram below has some parallels with OSS. The story however is a little long before it gets to the OSS part, so please bear with me. The diagram shows analysis the US Navy performed during WWII on where planes were being shot. The theory was that they should be reinforcing the areas that received […]
Yesterday’s post mentioned the importance of setting a future vision as part of your MVP delivery strategy. As Steve Blank said here, “Founders act like the “minimum” part is the goal. Or worse, that every potential customer should want it. In the real world not every customer is going to get overly excited about your minimum […]
“This minimum feature set (sometimes called the “minimum viable product”) causes lots of confusion. Founders act like the “minimum” part is the goal. Or worse, that every potential customer should want it. In the real world not every customer is going to get overly excited about your minimum feature set. Only a special subset of […]
Today’s is something of a heretical post, especially for the believers in ITIL. In the world of OSS, we look to build in layers of resiliency and not layers of redundancy. The following diagram and subsequent text in italics describes a typical ITIL process and is all taken from https://www.computereconomics.com/article.cfm?id=1074 The sequence of events as shown […]
Have you noticed an increasing presence of open-source tools in your OSS recently? Have you also noticed that open-source is helping to trigger transformation? Have you thought about why that might be? Some might rightly argue that it is the cost factor. You could also claim that they tend to help resolve specific, but common, […]
You already know that speed is important for OSS users. They / we don’t want to wait for minutes for the OSS to respond to a simple query. That’s obvious right? The bleeding obvious. But that’s not what today’s post is about. So then, what is it about? Actually, it follows on from yesterday’s post […]
Friday’s post posed a re-framing exercise that asked you (whether customer, seller or integrator) to run a planning exercise as if you MUST offer a money-back guarantee on your OSS (whether internal or external). It’s designed to force a change in mindset from risk mitigation to risk removal. We have another re-framing exercise for you […]
We’ve talked about some of the emotions we experience in the OSS industry earlier this week, the trauma of OSS and anxiety relating to OSS. To avoid these types of miserable feelings, it’s human nature to seek to limit them. We over-analyse, we over-specify, we over-engineer, we over-document, we over-contract, we over-react, we over-estimate (nah, […]
About 6-8 years ago, I was becoming achingly aware that I’d passed well beyond an information overload (I-O) threshold. More information was reaching my brain each day than I was able to assimilate, process and archive. What to do? Well, I decided to stop reading newspapers and watching the news, in fact almost all television. […]
This is the third in a series on ZTA, following on from yesterday’s post that suggested intentionally triggering events to allow the accumulation of a much larger library of historical network data. Today we’ll look at the impact of data collection on our ability to achieve ZTA and refer back to part 1 in the […]
Yesterday we described the three steps on the path to Zero Touch Assurance: Monitoring – Monitoring the events that happen in the network and responding manually Post-cognition – Monitoring events / trends that happen in the network, comparing them to past situations (using analytics to identify repeating patterns), using the past to recommend (or automate) […]
