Context sensitive help (CSH)
“We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.” Galileo Galilei. When you’re a network operator who is following a workflow to do a particular task, it’s quite likely that you’ll use one or more tools in a suite that includes OSS, BSS, NMS, EMS and more. Of the workflows […]
How to make your APIs better
“APIs are everywhere today and can be a great building block of modern applications. But all too often APIs are not truly great. Rather than love your API, developers curse it.” John Musser in relation to this slide deck. Yesterday’s post was about the importance of having an API that’s easy to integrate with for […]
Does your API open doors?
“Remember: An API is a journey, not a destination” John Musser in this slide-deck entitled “Ten Reasons Developers Hate Your API“. API (Application Programming Interface) are the mechanisms for getting data into and out of your OSS. Since an OSS doesn’t do anything useful without data, APIs are effectively the life-blood of an OSS. Yet, […]
The marriage analogy
“Don’t marry the person you think you can live with; marry only the individual you think you can’t live without.” James C. Dobson. A reader recently asked a great question about vendor lock-in. OSS tend to be very sticky (ie it’s very hard to change suppliers once an OctopOSS’s tentacles have spread throughout the CSP’s operations) so […]
Interruption is the enemy of productivity
“Interruption is the enemy of productivity.” Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson in Rework. OctopOSS are tightly entangled beasts. There are so many complexities that collaboration with your fellow project members is essential. But too many OSS projects get bogged down due to different forms of communications – meetings, documentation, conferences, chatting with colleagues and […]
What got you here…
“When times get confusing, it’s easy to revert to the habits that got you here. More often than not, that’s precisely the wrong approach. The very thing that got you here is the thing that everyone who’s here is doing, and if that’s what it took to get to the next level, no one would […]
The debt analogy
“Arrange your list of debts from smallest to largest (making sure you’re meeting the minimum repayments on each). Here’s the trick: attack your smallest debt (say your credit card) by bumping up the repayments, so you can knock it over like a domino as quickly as possible. When it’s paid in full, throw your card […]
The book is now available! Mastering your OSS
My OSS book, entitled “Mastering your OSS” is finally available to the market. Click on the image below to take a closer look. For the next two weeks only, I’m offering an extra US$10 off the purchase price to readers of this blog. Just send me an email or a note via the Contact Page […]
1,000 things to avoid a Frankenstein OSS
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have […]
A reader’s question – Implementation sequence
“I’d like to get your thoughts on how to execute an OSS transformation program. As the OSS (or the OctopOSS as you put it) is made up of Fulfillment, Assurance and Inventory as major pillars / building blocks, it would be quite a big task implementing all these all at once. Should the program start […]
Natural Language Processing
“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” Nelson Mandela. In a post from over a year ago entitled “I/O, I/O, it’s off to work I go” I spoke about using advanced techniques for […]
SDN outliers
“What’s caused the biggest evolution in SDN is the realization that very few organizations really have the desire, skills and incentives to write a new class of applications to a published API to program the network. These users are outlying use cases compared to the vast majority of organizations just looking to automate IT tasks, […]
Exciting news
“I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you […]
Single sign-on (SSO)
“I certainly am interested in accessibility, clarity, and immediacy.” Paul Muldoon. Single Sign-On (SSO) is a means of simplifying user access to a suite of different applications, such as the suite of tools that usually comprise a CSP’s OSS. It allows the user to authenticate once and credentials are propagated through other systems after the […]
What an OSS shouldn’t do
“Being selective — doing less — is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.” Tim Ferriss. When speaking with a great friend of mine today, Eddie, I came to the startling realisation that in nearly 700 blog posts, I have forgotten to speak about a major misgiving that […]
ThingWorx and DOCOMO form M2M cloud
ThingWorx Powers Largest Japan Mobile Service Provider NTT DOCOMO M2M Cloud Solution “ThingWorx, a leading Internet of Things (IoT) platform provider, announced NTT DOCOMO, Japan’s largest mobile service provider, has partnered with ThingWorx and Nippon Systemware Co., Ltd (NSW) for its new M2M cloud solutions powered by the ThingWorx platform. Serving more than 63 million […]
OSS risk approaches
“When anyone asks me how I can best describe my experience of nearly forty years at sea, I merely say, uneventful. Of course there have been winter gales, and storms and fog and the like, but in all my experience, I have never been in any accident of any sort worth speaking about…I never saw […]
Slaying performance dragons
“Always speak politely to an enraged dragon.” Steven Brust. Regular readers will have noticed my penchant for referring to the Pareto Principle (aka the 80/20 rule). I’m a big believer in focusing on streamlining the high-use or highly important items of OSS implementations. OSS are simply too big and too complex to get bogged down […]
Mastering your data
“Every single time you make a merger, somebody is losing his identity. And saying something different is just rubbish.” Carlos Ghosn. Today’s blog is derived from a wonderful question from a subscriber to the PAOSS blog. She asked: I would be interested to know more about Data integrity/Synchronization approach and challenges, especially when various mergers/acquisitions involved. Due to […]
Datafication
“Datafication” is a new term used to describe the process of turning an existing business into a “data business.” Bersin. We’ve had industrialisation and digitalisation. Are we already on the brink of a new business model mindset? Datafication. Many industries are now producing and storing prodigious amounts of data, of which OSS is one of […]