Minimise the tentacles on the OctopOSS. Keep it simple
In a recent article, we compared how telco holds itself accountable to its internally adored five-nine availability standards, yet still has cellar-dwelling customer satisfaction scores. When you consider the expanse and complexity of the global telco network, and the millions of micro-events that occur on it each day, telco networks are amazingly resilient. Telcos certainly […]
Large carriers (let’s call them T1’s) tend to approach OSS procurement projects very differently from small to medium sized carriers (let’s call them T2’s). This is mostly driven by budget, or more to the point, how the budget frames the thinking. We’ll also show you how drawing on ideas from the T2 approach can actually […]
Linda Evangelista, a supermodel back in the day, was famously quoted as saying, “I don’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day.” When conducting vendor selection processes with my clients, I tend to find the “OSS Linda Evangelista number” quite helpful. It’s the minimum dollar amount that a vendor will be prepared […]
The world relies on telecommunications providers for so much of our modern lifestyle. Yet the telco industry consistently fails to impress customers. Telcos interminably underperform on NPS (Net Promoter Score) metrics, such as the benchmark report from customergauge.com: Stone…Cold…Last!! Yet against this backdrop, the telco industry has always held itself to incredibly high engineering standards […]
Operational Support Systems (OSS) perform many business-critical functions for network operators, as shown in the diagram below. They are the connectors and the profit engine behind any communications network. As indicated above, the assurance flows help to retain revenues and customers. OSS are an insurance policy for a telco’s brand, or at least the technology […]
Our motto at Passionate About OSS is, “Removing complexity from OSS.” Sadly, we’re awash with complexity in our industry. If most OSS were represented as a board game, they’d look something like this: Image sourced from https://technabob.com Would you know how to play this game without instructions? Even if you had instructions, it could take […]
Yesterday’s release of Apple’s Vision Pro virtual reality headsets [actually, they’re not quite here like the headline says yet – apparently they’re becoming available in early 2024] provides just one more piece of evidence that our ways of interacting, communicating and working in telco are set for a transformative shift. Not just in telco, but […]
Earlier in the week, I shared a really exciting video from EnterpriseWeb (in collaboration with KX and Microsoft in particular). Clearly others have been just as impressed with that video as I was. That one video alone has triggered a wave of discussions. I suspect that’s because it provides a line-of-sight to what network operations […]
Over the last year, I’ve been assisting a consortium that includes a number of iconic brands such as Intel, RedHat, Fortinet, Keysight and TechMahindra. More importantly, those elements are underpinned by a powerful closed-loop engine formed by EnterpriseWeb and KX that stands up, observes and optimises a 5G RAN testbed. You can view the test-bed […]
Of all technological advancements, smartphones have had one of the most profound impacts on humanity in recent history. They have ingeniously monetised “idle time,” the brief intermissions between our important tasks, often filling our idle moments with a plethora of addictive apps, content and social media. However, as technology has evolved, these “idle time” tasks […]
In the last year, I’ve seen RFP responses worth an accumulated total of well over $1B for network services, systems and such. In almost every case, the carrier buyers have indicated that they’re seeking innovative solutions. That’s the outward-facing commentary at least. But the real, inward-facing story is that they’re just seeking cost-reductions in most […]
For all of the OSS and BSS vendors out there, I’d like to issue you a challenge. Can one person who’s not yet familiar with your solution (but has pre-requisite skills) set up your OSS / BSS product and demonstrate your product’s most essential use-cases with their own data / configurations and then demo to […]
The previous article in this series, “Telecommunications has reached its burning exchange moment,” highlighted that the current telco business model is at risk. It described how we could be experiencing an era of creative destruction of capital based on the works of Schumpeter and Marx. It also described: Poll results where nearly half of Europe’s […]
As the title asks, do you know what the most widely used OSS/BSS application is? The answer might actually surprise you, but we’ll get to that a little later in the article. Late last year, we published an article that outlined that a A seismic shift is already underway in IT circles and how it […]
Do you ever look into the past to determine whether commonalities / discrepancies could be used to inform how you might act into the future? When it comes to OSS/BSS and telco, I certainly do. I hark back into the days when CSPs were the world’s leading tech companies and innovators. They also had incredibly […]
Wait, “What??” I hear you ask! No it can’t. Have you ever worked on a BIG OSS project? One where the budget is in the hundreds of millions of dollars? Or even tens of millions of dollars? Have those big projects delivered your best transformation outcomes? Or have other projects, with more constrained budgets, been […]
When speaking with a customer last week, I was hearing the same expression of anguish that I’ve heard so many times before. The anguish of getting an OSS business case approved. Actually, in this rare case, the business case had already been approved. The budget had been allocated long ago. The exec sponsors were onboard […]
There were plenty of search engines before Google came along and grabbed a lot of the search market share. There were plenty of generative AI solutions before ChatGPT appeared and created a large amount of buzz too. The question is why did they grab attention / users and what can we learn from that to […]
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 […]
The cool part of this time of year, the holiday period, is that it prompts you to look backwards and look forwards. To be honest, writing articles here on the blog prompts me to do that throughout the year too, but there does tend to be a bit more downtime for reflection around the boundary […]
