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
“Eric Raymond proposed that a computer should ‘never ask the user for any information that it can autodetect, copy, or deduce’; computer vision changes what the computer has to ask. So it’s not, really, a camera, taking photos – it’s more like an eye, that can see.” Ben Evans here. There’s a big buzzword going […]
It’s almost time for our monthly OSS breakfast in Melbourne (last Wednesday of each month). Last month saw the attendance of the only UI / UX expert I know who also has OSS experience. It surprises me that there aren’t more UI / UX / OSS experts out there, but I’m also not all that […]
“…after a decade in which phones swallowed physical objects, with cameras, radios, music players and so on turned into apps, AR might turn those apps back into physical objects – virtual ones, of course. On one hand cameras digitise everything, and on the other AR puts things back into the world.” Ben Evans here. Similarly, […]
There can be many parts that make up an operator’s provisioning factory. There can also be multiple different software packages that contribute towards getting an order through the factory. In addition to that, there are usually many different activities that need to take place, some automatic, some manual, some as external dependencies, conditional gates, etc. […]
“Global telecommunications study: navigating the road to 2020.” In the study listed above, executives at some of the world’s largest CSPs indicate that the players most likely to disrupt their industry is OTT app providers. Any thoughts on why they might be perceived to be 30x more influential than technology specialists, or 5x more influential […]
On Friday we published The Simplification Mantra. It discussed the starting perspectives for simplification and that OSS already have so much functionality that they’re difficult for users to navigate. An example that I see time and again is where OSS can achieve a requirement, let’s say designing a service for one customer, but don’t cater […]
When it comes to designing, building and configuring OSS, there is a tendency to have a functionality delivery mindset. That is, if we can get our OSS to meet each functional requirement then we tick the box and move on to the next. There is usually a long list of requirements that need to be […]
“Instead of asking: do we have enough capacity? telcos should be asking: when (and where) will we run out of capacity? And what are we doing to mitigate? Instead of simply reacting to outages, telcos should have a real time view of the current risk points, failure scenarios and their impacts – with recovery plans should the […]
“Until now, communications service providers could not match their digital native counterparts when it came to delivering what customers want, when and where they want it. Now there is a real opportunity to close that gap through a number of interrelated, big trends that are happening in parallel. This includes transforming their infrastructure through network […]
“Perhaps the most egregious platform failure is to simply not see the platform play at all. It is also one of the hardest for traditional firms to avoid. Firms guilty of this oversight never get past the idea that they sell products when they could be building ecosystems. Sony, Hewlett Packard (HP), and Garmin all […]
“Companies often see the disruptive forces affecting their industry. They frequently divert sufficient resources to participate in emerging markets. Their failure is usually an inability to truly embrace the new business models the disruptive change opens up. Kodak created a digital camera, invested in the technology, and even understood that photos would be shared online. […]
A very clever friend of mine made an interesting observation recently. He had noticed that one of his global markets, a developing region, tended to ask for a very different set of outcomes from his OSS than his customers in more developed regions. He has noticed that the developing regions are asking business level questions […]
OSS tend to be created with CSPs in mind. But that’s a small market. If we extend the data model to open it up to fit the data collection requirements of any organisation that relies on a network then we open up OSS to a much broader market. I call this style of OSS the […]
“More people will pay you money to help them achieve a monetary goal than will pay you to give them something pretty to look at.” Web Teacher In recent posts we’ve explored OSS user interfaces and simpler interfaces in particular. But a pretty interface is only useful if helps a prospective client achieve a monetary […]
“Whitespace, many times referred to as negative space, is the portion of a page left unmarked, the portion that is left blank, or the empty space in a page. In web design terms, it’s the space between graphics, columns, images, text, margins and other elements. It is the space left untouched in order to smooth […]
“The utter complexity of huge, standardized software systems also explains the death of big software. Enormous whole-company projects are often beyond the capabilities of even the most experienced project and program managers – especially when there’s never 100% consensus about the need for such a draconian project in the first place. The cloud has also […]
Thought you might like this graphic from AnalysisMason. The opportunities in OSS / BSS have their own list of corresponding opportunities. You can find a few thoughts here.
“Humans can speak 150 vs. type 40 words per minute, on average..” Kleiner Perkins’ Internet Trends 2016. The latest Mary Meeker report (ie the link above) provides some interesting insights, as usual. One of them is the reference to voice becoming a much more significant computing interaction mechanism – evolving from keyboards to microphones and […]
“We’re an industry that still has overwhelming demand for what we do. We’re right at the core of this digital ecosystem; we’re in an amazing position. We enable the digital world to really happen, so without understating the issues we have – the value chain issues we have, the disruption we face – we should […]
Last week we ran a series of blogs about what the OSS of the future is going to look like. It’s going to be simple, not cluttered. It’s going to provide answers, not just reams of information. It’s going to allow operators to throw questions at it, in natural speech. It may even provide you […]
