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
“Software-defined networking (SDN) is an approach to computer networking which abstracts the hardware of the system, the control plane and the data plane“ Wikipedia. SDN is another technology that is revolutionising OSS. It is having a dramatic effect on traditional CSPs, allowing them to move from being network-based Telcos to software-based services companies. It allows […]
“The word “simple” has become so cliché that I try not to use it anymore, but ultimately the point is that things are pretty easy and simple until you make them hard and complicated. So we’re always trying to keep them as simple and easy as they naturally are. So if we have a big […]
“What revenue model should I use? = the wrong question to ask. Why will people pay me? = the right question“ The Board of Innovation. There are so many different revenue models in OSS that there are no simple apples-for-apples comparisons on price. There are perpetual licenses, annual licenses, processor-based licensing, node-based licensing, named user […]
“Customer satisfaction is worthless. Customer loyalty is priceless.” Jeffrey Gitomer. Okay, so you’ve built an OSS, you’ve delivered loads of training and you’ve worked your way through UAT (User Acceptance Testing), achieving great feedback from the customer along the way. But now the customer takes over the reins. Are they ready? Are they able to […]
“There was US$21.9B spent on games in the USA alone in 2012.” NewZoo infographic [Please note: I’ve since been advised that this link to the infographic may be malware] According to the infographic, $2.1B was spent on Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games and $2.4B on mobile games alone. At the moment, these games tend to […]
“The digital world is much more fragmented – an ecosystem of different players each delivering their element of the service – with a different access network, core network, computing, storage and many applications providers. And where services comprise a number of aggregated application services, the challenges get even harder. If the only person getting the […]
“The other part of outsourcing is this: it simply says where the work can be done outside better than it can be done inside, we should do it.” Alphonso Jackson. In this last of a nine-part series on non-traditional OSS markets, we touch on the possible business model differences to support and implement OSS. With […]
“I think I understand something about space. I think the job of a sculptor is spatial as much as it is to do with form.” Anish Kapoor. Whilst a utility (eg rail, electricity, water, mining, etc) will have many facets of similarity with CSPs, the one major difference tends to be that it will have […]
“Enlightenment must come little by little – otherwise it would overwhelm.” Idries Shah. It was whilst heading up a communications roll-out at a huge gas processing plant in the middle east that I realised what a massive opportunity existed for OSS vendors outside the traditional CSP market. We designed a converged network that encapsulated traditional […]
“You can use all the quantitative data you can get, but you still have to distrust it and use your own intelligence and judgment.” Alvin Toffler As an OSS vendor, how many of your customers operate in different sectors and don’t compete directly with each other? If the answer is a high percentage then you […]
“You must be honest about what you want at a core level and decide to go after it.” Martha Beck Every CSP has a vastly different set of requirements from their OSS. Some have non-negotiable requirements that are not relevant to all others. When you’re a vendor that services top-end telcos, there aren’t many customers […]
“When you hear buzz around the beehive, you know they’re making honey in there.” Terrence Howard In an earlier post we talked about gesture computing and how it might be used to manage the networks and control the OSS of the future, so the possibilities presented by the MYO from Thalmic Labs, seen here, appears to be […]
“The public is mad, frustrated, but what the public wants is progress.” Michael Bloomberg Michael Bloomberg made his whole business model around getting financial data to traders just a few seconds faster. His net worth was in the order of US$25B according to Forbes in September 2012. Are CSPs willing to pay a premium to […]
“Simply put, Landing Page Optimization has a high ROI” ecommercepartners.net In the world of e-Commerce, the concept of having multiple landing pages is an important method to determine which of your marketing strategies or sales copy is the most successful. Now it’s quite obvious that OSS are not directly comparable with e-Commerce websites. However, are […]
“How is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home winemaking course, and I forgot how to drive?” Homer Simpson I just realised that a really serious oversight needed to be fixed. I hadn’t […]
“Augmented Reality (AR) represents a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input, that enrich the user’s perception of the real world.” MindCommerce.com Smart-phones have already generated significant changes in the way we work and play. OSS tools are starting to be developed that harness […]
“We are addicted to our thoughts. We cannot change anything if we cannot change our thinking.” Santosh Kalwar Drug dealers have enough faith in the addictive nature of their product that they can offer a free trial, knowing their customers will be back. Without having the deadly effects, can a free trial of your OSS […]
“The question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether submarines can swim.” Edsger W. Dijkstra Artificial intelligence (AI) and fuzzy logic is a field that has fascinated me since being taught the topic as part of an Electronic Engineering subject at University. The concept of machines/software that can measure, analyse, refine […]
“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity” Albert Einstein There are many things that spawn my passion for OSS, but the strongest reason is brilliantly encapsulated in Einstein’s quote above. There are a loooooong list of difficulties with OSS in their current form: They have many layers of complexity They are time consuming to implement They […]
“One man’s transparency is another’s humiliation.” Gerry Adams Social media gives everyone’s voice a loud-speaker. Sites like Wikileaks take the exposition of secrets to a new level. There is almost nowhere left to hide. But why hide? Transparency and honesty make customers and employees more comfortable and trusting in what you have to offer. The […]
