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
A number of years ago I heard about an OSS product that introduced collaborative rooms for network operators to collectively solve challenging network health events. It was in line with some of my own thinking about the use of collaboration techniques to solve cross-domain or complex events. But the concept hasn’t caught on in the […]
“While the 20th century was all about centralizing command and control to gain efficiency through vertical integration and mass standardization, 21st century automation is about decentralization – gaining efficiency through horizontal integration of partner ecosystems and mass customization, as in the context-aware cloud where personalized experience across channels is dynamically orchestrated. The operational challenge of […]
OSS Vendor 1. “I have 1 million features.” (Dr Evil puts finger in mouth) OSS Vendor 2. “Yeah, well I have 1,000,001 features in my OSS.” This is the arms-race that we see in OSS, just like almost any other tech product. I imagine that vendors get into this arms-race because they wish to differentiate. […]
““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. […]
Imagine for a moment that you’re sitting in front of a pristine chess board, awaiting the opportunity to make your first move. All of the pieces have been exquisitely carved from stone, polished to a sheen. The rules of the game have been established for centuries, so you know exactly which piece is able to […]
In the world of networking, it’s common for devices to go EOL (end-of-life). Capital spend and depreciation models are based around refresh cycles of around 5-7 years. Vendors reinforce this refresh cycle by designing obsolescence into maintenance, support and part supplies. Customers tend to simply submit to the risk of having no vendor support by […]
Many years ago, I worked on a seriously big OSS transformation for one of the region’s biggest telcos. Everything was big on the project, the investment, the resources, the documentation. Everything except the outcomes. There was so much inefficiency that I often spoke about making one day of progress for every ten on site. Meetings, […]
Let’s start with a basic question. “What does an OSS need to do?” The basic answer is, “make operations easier.” The real answer(s) is so much more nuanced than that of course. The term easier can also encapsulate other words such as faster, more accurate, more repeatable, cheaper, etc. Designing, building, operating and maintaining a […]
“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 […]
Over the years I’m sure you’ve seen many different OSS demonstrations. You’ve probably also seen presentations by vendors / integrators that have shown multiple different products from their suite. How integrated have they appeared to you? Have they seemed tightly integrated, as if carved from a single piece of stone? Or have they seemed loosely […]
“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 […]
As you already know, there are two categories of downtime – unplanned (eg failures) and planned (eg upgrades / maintenance). Planned downtime sounds a lot nicer (for operators) but the reality is that you could call both types “incidents” – they both impact (or potentially impact) the customer. We sometimes underestimate that fact. Today’s question […]
“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 […]
We had a highly flexible network design team at a previous company. Not because we wanted to necessarily, but because we were forced to by the client’s allocation of work. Our team was largely based on casual workers because there was little to predict whether we needed 2 designers or 50 in any given week. […]
“If your partners don’t have to talk to you then you win.” Guy Lupo. Put another way, the best form of customer service is no customer service (ie your customers and/or partners are so delighted with your automated offerings that they have no reason to contact you). They don’t want to contact you anyway (generally […]
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 […]
A couple of weeks ago, Telstra and the TM Forum held an event in Melbourne on OSS for next gen architectures. The diagram below comes from a presentation by Corey Clinger. It describes Telstra’s Operational Domain Manager (ODM) model that is a key component of their Network as a Service (NaaS) framework. Notice the API […]
Let me ask you a question – when you’ve expanded your bag of tricks that help you to manage your OSS, where have they typically originated? By reading? By doing? By asking? Through mentoring? Via training courses? Relating to technical? People? Process? Product? Operations? Network? Hardware? Software? Design? Procure? Implement / delivery? Test? Deploy? By […]
Zero touch network & Service Management (ZSM) is a next-gen network management approach using closed-loop principles hosted by ETSI. An ETSI blog has just demonstrated the first ZSM Proof of Concept (PoC). The slide deck describing the PoC, supplied by EnterpriseWeb, can be found here. The diagram below shows a conceptual closed-loop assurance architecture used within […]
