Minimise the tentacles on the OctopOSS. Keep it simple
“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 […]
“I think doing variations on a classical theme is a dangerous thing to do.” Tori Amos. Many organisations select a COTS (Commercial off-the-shelf) OSS tool and immediately start thinking about customisations to make it do exactly what they want. That’s one way… but not necessarily the best long-term solution. Customisations are intoxicating for both CSPs […]
“Inertia is the resistance of any physical object to any change in its motion (including a change in direction).” Wikipedia. According to classical physics, Force equals Mass x Acceleration (F = ma). In other words, the greater the mass, the more force must be applied to reach a given acceleration (ie to effect a change). […]
“A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past.” Fidel Castro. In yesterday’s blog, we discussed the air-traffic controller analogy for incremental change to your OSS via the use of projects. Today we talk of transformational change. Transformation has appeared in the Telco vernacular as a guiding vision of a […]
“Fear less, hope more; eat less, chew more; whine less, breathe more; talk less, say more; love more, and all good things will be yours.” Swedish proverb. Today’s post is minimalistic. Please take a few moments to consider what the proverb means to you in relation to OSS projects. To me it covers the same […]
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Leonardo da Vinci. Let me portray a scenario for you. I’d love to get your predictions on the likely outcome. A massive tier-one Telco was running an OSS vendor selection process a few years ago. The Telco ran an initial Proof-of-Concept session, giving various vendors the opportunity to show their […]
“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.” Oscar Wilde. As discussed yesterday, I have a dream when it comes to system interfaces. Interfaces will be able to be constructed by mere mortals, not only by […]
“I think complexity is mostly sort of crummy stuff that is there because it’s too expensive to change the interface.” Jaron Lanier. In most cases, OSS projects fail because of complexity. Complexity in any number of layers – service complexity, network complexity, political complexity, operational complexity, etc. Or perhaps a combination of many. One of […]
“Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) aims to transform the way that network operators architect networks by evolving standard IT virtualisation technology to consolidate many network equipment types onto industry standard high volume servers, switches and storage” ETSI document, “Network Function Virtualisation (NFV); Use Cases” The above document from ETSI describes nine use cases of interest for […]
“Positivity is such a high predicator of success rates..” Shawn Achor in his book, “The Happiness Advantage.” In Principle 5 in Achor’s book, he talks about the Zorro circle, stemming from the movie of the same name starring Antonio Banderas. In it, Zorro’s mentor draws a line in the dirt, forcing Zorro to learn how […]
“I love taking an idea… to a prototype and then to a product that millions of people use.” Susan Wojcicki. When it comes to starting with an OSS build, I’m a big believer in the benefits of building a rapid prototype in one of the customer’s pre-production* environment. Most suppliers approach their OSS implementation projects […]
