Fragmentation

“As markets grow, they fragment, forming distinct sub-markets that may break away from the parent market to become sustainable separate markets, with different products and services. Fragments start as small segments of customers with similar needs but for which there is no customized solution available. As a result they do not buy or make do […]

Coffee with OSS

“When someone discovered that the coffee bean made a tasty, refreshing drink, it was not necessary to do more than say so. Competition to sell coffee beans meant price wars and mergers and regulation and ethical dilemmas. Now, no-one sells their coffee beans as ‘cheaper’ – it is not ‘sustainable’ to do so. Coffee beans […]

The television analogy

“The most corrosive piece of technology that I’ve ever seen is called television – but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent.” Steve Jobs. In the television age, the first half saw the biggest margins going to the technology innovators. The technologies were the drivers and innovators reaped their rewards. TV sets, outside broadcast […]

Leaving it up to CSPs

“Here’s a thought exercise for the audience: Imagine no Internet: no data on phones, no Ethernet or wi-fi connections at home — or anywhere. No email, no Google, no Facebook, no Skype. That’s what we would have if designing the Internet had been left up to phone and cable companies, and not to geeks whose […]

OSS broadens its net – part 4

“And God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light, but the Electricity Board said He would have to wait until Thursday to be connected.” Spike Milligan. Over the past few days, we have spoken about the different industries that have been, or could benefit from the introduction of OSS. Utilities companies (electricity, water, […]

OSS broadens its net – part 3

“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 […]

OSS broadens its net – part 2

“Different roads sometimes lead to the same castle.” George R.R. Martin. In yesterday’s blog entry, non-traditional industries were discussed as potential users of OSS technologies. In reality, OSS just model the assets of CSPs as nodes, arcs and services, with all sorts of associated attributes. In a telco network: node = network device (eg router/switch), arc […]

OSS broadens its net

“I always say the next big thing will happen in unexpected places.” Anna Sui. I recently ran a survey to find out more about the true OSS market needs. One of the responses caused a light-bulb moment. Despite having worked with customers from alternate industries and having nearly 250 entries in this blog roll, there […]

Service Models

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” Charles Darwin What service model will be the most successful offering that OSS vendors can make to their CSPs? On-premise? Cloud-based? OSSaaS (OSS as a Service)? Other? Traditionally, on-premise was the stand-out leader. But […]

It’s all about content

“In the end it is subscribers who pay the bills. And subscribers, though often sold on the gadgets and networks technologies powering their favourite services, in the end it is the delivery of the service that matters. Whether they stream or download content over one technology or another isn’t important to them, their main concern […]

Net Promoter Score

“I think we have a gap that we have to close,” he said in response to a question on the OTT threat. “The internet brands I think will become serious competitors for us as an industry and I think can erode our revenue models more than sometimes we appreciate.” He added that telcos needed to change their […]

IT meets Telco

“Seriously, we are in the midst of the convergence of voice and data and that is challenging the infrastructure of the telephone companies. There are huge commercial interests in the basic technology, but even more so in content delivery and control of content.” Steve Crocker. It is a commonly held belief that telecommunications technologies and […]

MVNO Roaming

“A Mobile Virtual Network Operator (“MVNO”) is a company that offers mobile telephone services by reselling the mobile services of another carrier, usually with certain limitations, but at a lower cost. In the U.S., there are MVNOs that resell AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon services at a lower cost than you can obtain service directly […]

How can you replace Art?

“The value of products and services today is based more and more on creativity — the innovative ways that they take advantage of new materials, technologies, and processes. Value creation in the past was a function of economies of industrial scale: mass production and the high efficiency of repeatable tasks. Value creation in the future […]

Are you still mining for nuggets?

“Moore’s law is the observation that over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years“ Wikipedia. Would you like to predict the future of OSS? Sounds like a tough ask right? Where would you start? Personally, I’d start by looking at proven trends of exponential growth […]

BSS-OSS Personalisation Layer

“It is common for us to receive an e-mail from a customer apologizing for not responding sooner because they thought our automated follow-up was being done manually. The key to a successful follow-up program is personalization and making it relevant for the customer.” John Hopkins. Why did Apple’s iPod revolutionise the music industry? Was it […]

OTT Clouds

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.” Rabindranath Tagore. In yesterday’s blog I discussed the aircraft carrier analogy when bringing rapid change into a legacy OSS. The CSPs of the future will need to be based around partnerships. Not just […]

Managed Services

“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.” Anatole France. In the past, CSPs had such significant barriers to entry and economic clout that they could price almost any smaller player […]

There are only 4 types of job

“Everything starts with an idea. This is the first of the four jobs – the Thinkers. Builders convert these ideas into reality. This the second job. Improvers make this reality better. This is the third job. Producers do the work over and over again, delivering quality goods and services to the company’s customers in a […]

How far are you willing to go?

“How far would you go to find your passion?” Drew Dudley in this thought-provoking blog entry that I really recommend that you should read. OSS are one of the fundamental building blocks of the Communications Networks that are driving the Digital Revolution. OSS have the ability to make the Digital experience better. As a rule, […]