The OSS market is highly fragmented. There’s a constant flow of M&A (Merger and Acquisition) projects underway. This category looks into all things OSS M&A – valuations, due diligence, the buying process, strategies to grow, preparation for buy / sell, etc
Many of you will have already seen our Blue Book OSS/BSS Vendor Directory, which provides a view into the 500+ solutions that are available on the market. It’s been a real labour-of-love project, draining lots and lots of time and resources to allow us to keep shining a light on the many outstanding suppliers / […]
This article by Jeff Haden in Inc Magazine, “30 Years Ago, Steve Jobs Said 1 Habit Separates the Doers From the Dreamers,” has made me re-think the way I work, but also reconsider the way the OSS / telco industry works. “One of my least favorite things to do is ask for help. Not only […]
In recent years, we’ve seen a rise in traditional telecommunications providers selling off tranches of tower assets. These sell-offs have likely occurred for a variety of reasons – to help fund 5G roll-outs, to pay down debt, to invest in further digital transformation projects, etc. In short, capital demands / ambitions appear to often exceed […]
Back in my early days of OSS, I knew there was soooo much to learn. As the signpost below suggests, as well as the OSS applications themselves, there were also adjacent / related fields like databases, networks, services, architecture, programming, and so much more. Pretty daunting! But after a few years in the industry, I […]
The early 2000s (when I first started out in, and fell in love with, the OSS industry) saw many Tier-1 telcos make large OSS and BSS transformation investments. Prior to that, they’d largely run their operations from NMS level and/or using home-grown systems. Since there weren’t many existing OSS to unseat, these projects were mostly […]
The airline industry is comprised of many regional carriers. There is no global carrier (although there are alliances). Each continent has multiple airlines. There are also local / regional airlines. Airlines of different sizes, business models and target customers. Different service offerings and different look & feel in terms of the customer experience (CX). This […]
Are you an OSS and/or BSS supplier or telecommunications company that is thinking about seeking external investment or selling (in the sense of M&A [Mergers and Acquisitions], not the normal products and services you sell)? In recent years, we’ve been involved in an increased number of M&A projects, and I’m assuming this mirrors a rise […]
Everything you know right now, and all the knowledge you have collected over your career, is diminishing in relevance at an increasing rate. For those of us who’ve been in this game for decades rather than years, a lot of the knowledge we accumulated during our “apprenticeship” years is losing its lustre. This is particularly […]
How valuable is the OSS / BSS industry do you think? How would you measure it? How would the market measure it? Have you ever pondered these questions? By extension, have you also wondered how to make it more valuable? Or perhaps how to make certain players within it more valuable? If you have, would […]
It’s a completely silly question to ask you whether you’ve noticed that the world of OSS is changing rapidly isn’t it? Of course you’ve already noticed that it has and is. Do you already have plans to learn new concepts to help you adapt to those changes in 2023? If so, are you thinking about […]
Do you ever get that feeling that your mental models of the telco / tech / OSS/BSS worlds are different to those of almost everyone else? Do you feel like there are the status-quo approaches that are kind of proven, but still not really as good as they could be? That there must be even […]
Seth Godin recently wrote a brilliant article that describes the craziness of seeking a market with no competition. In entirety, his article goes like this: “There’s no competition for cookbooks on making food out of soccer balls and hockey pucks. There’s no competition for software that charges you to find out the temperature on Mars. There’s no […]
I’ve spent the last 22-ish years working on OSS and even longer on telco projects. Most of that time has involved way more than the typical 40 hour work week (often more than double). But the amazing thing is that it’s (almost) never felt like it. Time has almost always seemed to fly by so […]
Have you ever wondered about the process of buying or selling an OSS or BSS company? Are you potentially even thinking of buying or selling an OSS/BSS / telco / tech company? It’s not an event that happens very often, but given the amount of fragmentation in the OSS/BSS industry, M&A (Mergers & Acquisitions) happen […]
Last week was kind of exciting (and a bit manic!). As well as working on a tech due-diligence (DD) and an important client OSS/BSS roadmap, I had the chance to witness some important steps in the progression on telco Augmented Reality (AR) use-cases. On the software side, we already have many exciting use-cases lining up […]
Like most readers, I’m sure your OSS/BSS suite consists of many components. What if you were to look at each of those components as assets? In a share portfolio, you analyse your stocks to see which assets are truly worth keeping and which should be divested. We don’t tend to take such a long-term analytical […]
In 1998 Berkshire Hathaway acquired a reinsurance company called General Re. “The only significant staff change that followed the merger was the elimination of General Re’s investment unit. Some 150 people had been in charge of deciding where to invest the company’s funds; they were replaced with just one individual – Warren Buffett.” Robert G. […]
“Mike Flint was Warren Buffett’s personal airplane pilot for 10 years. (Flint has also flown four US Presidents, so I think we can safely say he is good at his job.) According to Flint, he was talking about his career priorities with Buffett when his boss asked the pilot to go through a 3-step exercise. […]
“Don’t be involved in 50 or 100 things. That’s a Noah’s Ark way of investing – you end up with a zoo that way. Put meaningful amounts of money in a few things you know well.” Warren Buffett. There are a lot of OSS products on the market. From that list, you can probably name […]
“Now if at the start of the 20th century you had seen what the auto [industry] was going to do to this country, the impact it would have on the lives of then your children and grandchildren and so on. It just, it transformed the American landscape. But of those 2000 companies, three basically survive. And […]
Here at Passionate About OSS, we are exactly that – Passionate About OSS (Operational Support Systems). We’re also passionate about BSS, NMS, or any other names you call the tools that help to operationalise your network.
