Minimise the tentacles on the OctopOSS. Keep it simple
“An empowered organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success.” Stephen Covey, In yesterday’s blog, I described the importance of providing the field workforce with tools that improve the feedback of data into the OSS, thus improving data […]
“They (customers) don’t want quarter-inch bits. They want quarter-inch holes.” Leo McGinneva. As alluded to in McGinneva’s quote above, OSS are only a means to an end. A customer doesn’t want a Performance Management tool. They want to ensure their network is performing efficiently and reliably. If a better approach comes along, there might no […]
“They say “the house always wins.” And it’s true – games always favour their maker. If you’re not playing a part in designing the game you’re playing, you’re probably being played..” Dr Jason Fox. Following a recent blog entitled Gamified Learning, a friend and colleague pointed me towards the work of Dr Jason Fox, someone […]
“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” Benjamin Franklin. In an earlier post, the question of using gamification as a means of learning was posed In another earlier post, knowledge bases were discussed. And in a third post, the concept of an OSS apprenticeship was proposed. In today’s post, let’s discuss a product concept […]
“In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later.” Harold S. Geneen. In the world of Telco, there are also two coins. One is technology and one is cash. Telco and OSS engineers often get wrapped up in the righteousness of technology. […]
“Heights by great men reached and kept were not obtained by sudden flight but, while their companions slept, they were toiling upward in the night.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 110 years ago today, the Wright Brothers made the first manned flight, a well known story. Not quite so well known is the story of Samuel Langley, […]
“We don’t know where our first impressions come from or precisely what they mean, so we don’t always appreciate their fragility.” Malcolm Gladwell. They say that first impressions are lasting. Apple knows this and invests greatly in their first impressions, their packaging. I’m no great devotee of Apple, but I was certainly wowed by the […]
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” Peter Drucker. In yesterday’s blog we discussed the trend of carrier’s focussing on Customer Experience Management, specifically the results of a Comarch study on mobility carriers. There are so many aspects of CEM […]
“As consumers we are incredibly discerning. We sense where has been great care in the design, and when there is cynicism and greed.” Jonathan Ive. Over the years, I’ve created interface specifications for many devices, element managers and network managers (NE/EMS/NMS). Some have been very easy to figure out. Others have been highly complex. Today, […]
“Sometimes you are in sync with the times, sometimes you are in advance, sometimes you are late.” Bernardo Bertolucci. Yesterday we spoke of the OSS of the future not having an offline database that needs to be synchronised against network assets regularly. As we all know, data synch is one of the banes of an […]
“The agendas on the management side of the table now are not in sync like they used to be because you have vastly different entities supplying programming to networks.” Dick Wolf It’s funny how that quote sounds so relevant to network management platforms on software-defined networks yet has nothing to do with it. But I […]
“Passivity is fatal to us.” Mao Zedong. In a blog written a year ago today, we discussed some of the challenges in maintaining data synchronisation from your outside plant, your passive network, your pits, pipes and cables, because they have no programmatic interface. Without the mechanism for automated feedback via a programmatic interface, the CSP […]
“Money is not the most important thing in the world. Love is. Fortunately, I love money.” Jackie Mason. Whether you’re with an integrator or are a CSP’s employee, there’s one* basic question to ask yourself when starting on a new OSS: Is your OSS assisting the CSP with their top line (revenues) or bottom line […]
“When a match has equal partners then I fear not.” Aeschylus. The major OSS of the nineties and noughties can be categorised as centralised, structured (ie built on relational databases and modelling connection-oriented services) and not-quite-realtime. I envisage the next generation will be distributed, unstructured (ie virtualised and with rapid shifts in data sources) and […]
“We are not cisterns made for hoarding, we are channels made for sharing.” Billy Graham. Have you ever stopped to wonder why most CSP’s OSS are so complex? Put simply, they are almost all hoarders. They collect services, device types, management systems, data, interfaces, etc. But how often do they ever discard one? Even when […]
“Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement.” Peter Drucker. Permissions are an important part of an OSS, particularly in a carrier with many different operational groups. They are the mechanism that only allows a user to access the parts of the OSS, or its data sets, that are necessary for their […]
“It is often easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.” Grace Hopper. There are many barriers to delivering an OSS, often built up from the rules of the organisations involved. Sometimes the rules make sense. Other times, rules (and the people responsible for enforcing these rules) just prevent progress. The best implementers […]
“Logic will not change an emotion, but action will.” Zig Ziglar. So many OSS projects get bogged down in logic, discussions, technical pontification, etc. But in my experience, a month of discourse can be replaced by a week of doing, especially when the customer is using COTS (ie commercially available off the shelf solutions). Or […]
“The concept behind the inverted pyramid format is relatively simple. The writer prioritizes the factual information to be conveyed in the news story by importance. The most essential pieces of information are offered in the first line, which is called the lead… The writer then provides the rest of the information and supporting contextual details […]
“IT as a service is a game changer. Because you now have components of the IT department existing in the cloud, you free your in-house IT staff to shift from a maintenance mode to an innovation mode. As such, your IT department can focus on achieving business goals, creating innovative solutions, and driving sales rather […]
