Minimise the tentacles on the OctopOSS. Keep it simple
I have a really important question for you to ask yourself today. It’s a question that shapes a lot of our thinking about how I can help the OSS/BSS/telco industry. How does what I do make more money for clients? Not just what your company does. Not what your brand says on the website. Not […]
We’re releasing our latest report today. Click on the image below to download it. Why are transformation approvals (eg business case approvals, vendor selections, project transformation decisions) forced to look perfect when delivery is anything but? That is the quiet contradiction at the heart of many (most?) digital transformation programmes. We build business cases as […]
As seen in the diagram, for most of telecom history, the core business model has been simple: Build networks Sell access to those networks Recover capital (revenue) through subscription and usage revenues, and Protect margin through scale and operational efficiency But what happens if (when? after?) that model breaks? What happens if connectivity becomes so […]
If you’re leading an OSS/BSS transformation, one of the hardest parts is not knowing what needs to happen first (or second, third, etc). Not in theory. In practice. Most large transformation programmes don’t fail because of a lack of ambition. They fail because the early sequencing is off or steps are overlooked. Vendor conversations begin […]
With MWC upon us again, I thought I’d pose a question about how our industry, and the 500+ OSS/BSS vendor market within it, is currently evolving. Telcos spend billions on transformation programmes every year. They talk about massive disruption like cloud-native stacks, open architectures, AI-driven automation and next-generation digital experiences. On paper, it sounds like […]
Quants have become the rockstars of modern share trading – extracting powerful signals from oceans of data at near real-time speed. Trading firms invest billions in them and in infrastructure that will give them even the slightest timing edge. Yet while telcos drown in dashboards, the next competitive advantage may belong to the “NOC-star” – […]
One of the things I find incredibly interesting when I look at the Simplified TAM diagram below is that of each of the arrows indicating a workflow, only one has systems that aren’t really designed to manage the operational workflow. Assurance has trouble tickets Fulfilment has service orders Field operations has work orders Even billing […]
Two goldfish are dropped into a new tank. One turns to the other and asks, “Do you know how to fire the cannon on this thing?” That single gag captures the moment when what you expected collapses and the script is flipped. It has similarities with what users experience when a software transformation is forced […]
What happens when a Software Engineer, Enterprise Architect and Network Ops Engineer walk into a bar?….. . You know that head-slap moment when you realise software is more hindrance than help? I had one such experience back in circa 2005, when I watched a genuinely brilliant network ops engineer spend an entire afternoon navigating tools […]
Whether we like it or not, most of us judge books by their covers. Sometimes that’s visual. Sometimes it’s the title. But here’s a thing I find interesting. Having written a couple of books myself, a lot of thought goes into choosing the title to resonate with the viewing audience. And yet, sometimes a title […]
The last four articles have explored the way some telcos are using AI technologies counter-productively today – AI entanglement, transformation planning, dependency visibility and the hazards of autonomy. The final question for this article is whether telcos can or will ever earn the right to unplug their legacy OSS. In Part 4, we ended with […]
Many (myself included), believe that recent progress in AI-based technologies should accelerate digital transformation (even if only by inspiring us to think differently about the digital systems we already have). However, in Part 1 of this series we explored a paradox. The most common uses of AI today are not loosening the grip of legacy […]
Like microservices before it, AI and agentic solutions are increasingly seen as the panacea of digital transformation. In telco circles, AI is often framed as the fastest path to escape. A way to finally move beyond the clunky, legacy worlds of OSS/BSS. Piecemeal AI projects promise quick wins, modern capabilities, and a stepping stone towards […]
We speak with buyers and sellers every week, and one word keeps repeating. Trust. It keeps appearing in buyer conversations and seller conversations alike. It’s more than a word though. It’s costing the telco industry millions. When trust is missing, 18-24 month buying cycles become the default. This is the Buyer – Seller Chasm that […]
I’d always assumed that more feedback loops meant better control, and faster / smarter / optimal operations. But what happens when each system has its own idea of what “smart” or “optimal” even means? Are we, in fact, optimising our way into instability and inefficiency? Could hundreds of competing feedback loops be automating misalignment faster […]
We’re already seeing it. AI is slowly infiltrating telecom, one little project at a time… monitoring, automating, optimising. In AI, we have one of the most disruptive opportunities of our lifetime, but the results of telco AI projects to date still feel eerily familiar. Are most telcos using tomorrow’s tools with yesterday’s thinking? Maybe the […]
We know telco customers want faster speeds.But is it possible that we’re focussed on the wrong type of speed?Here’s a hint: the real drag isn’t line-speed. . “Finally”: The Message that Triggered an Article Late last week a friend pinged me with a SpeedTest screenshot and a single word: “finally.” I was confused. At first […]
Ever noticed how many OSS decisions are made by people who have never set foot on site? What if your single most powerful OSS upgrade this year is a day riding shotgun with field techs in a hi-viz vest? This article digs into the quiet damage that OSS experts with a total lack of field […]
Are you frustrated by the complexity of your OSS/BSS factory? With hundreds or even thousands of systems, all trying to juggle thousands of activities without dropping the ball is like organised chaos. But what if we’re looking at it all wrong, both in the way we’ve always designed our legacy application architectures and how we’re […]
Are you worried that your OSS/BSS stack, or parts of it, might be in desperate need of an overhaul? Many OSS experts love being archaeologists, down on their knees, carefully brushing off the dust to unearth their OSS fossil and painstakingly preserving it. But modern network operations aren’t archaeological digs. We can’t just make educated guesses […]
