Minimise the tentacles on the OctopOSS. Keep it simple
A slightly left-field thought dawned on me the other day and I’d like to hear your thoughts on it. We all know that almost all telemetry coming out of our networks is time-stamped. Events, syslogs, metrics, etc. That makes perfect sense because we look for time-based ripple-out effects when trying to diagnose issues. But therefore […]
….I want to make my network so observable, reliable, predictable and repeatable that I don’t need anyone to operate it. That’s clearly a highly ambitious goal. Probably even unachievable if we say it doesn’t need anyone to run it. But I wonder whether this has to be the starting point we take on behalf of […]
“For those starting out in product, here’s a tip: Design, Defaults*, Documentation, Details and Delivery really matter in software.”Jeetu Patel here. * Note that you can interpret “Defaults” to be Out-Of-The-Box functionality offered by the product. Let’s break those 5 D-words down and describe why they really matter to the OSS industry shall we? Design […]
In last Tuesday’s post, I asked the community here on PAOSS and on TM Forum’s Engage platform for ideas about how you would benchmark complexity. I also provided a reference to an old post that described the concept of a NSS (Net Simplicity Score) for our OSS/BSS. Due to the complexity of factors that contribute to […]
I’d love to ask you an important question… how do we benchmark OSS/BSS complexity? To measure how complex our systems are and therefore provide a signpost for simplification. A colleague has opined that the number of apps in a stack could be used a proxy. I can see where he’s going with that, but I […]
There’s an old adage that “the confused mind always says no.” Consider this from your own perspective. If you’re in a state of confusion about something, are you likely to commit wholeheartedly or will you look to delay / procrastinate? The paradox for digital transformation is that our projects are almost always complex, but complexity […]
In Monday’s article, we suggested that the three technical factors that could get the big boss fired are probably only limited to: Repeated and/or catastrophic failure (of network, systems, etc) Inability to serve the market (eg offerings, capacity, etc) Inability to operate network assets profitably In that article, we looked closely at a human factor […]
I’m currently reading a book entitled, “Jony Ive. The genius behind Apple’s greatest products.” I’d like to share a paragraph with you from it (and probably expect a few more in coming days): “…Apple’s internal culture heavily favored the engineers within the product groups. The design process was engineering driven. In the early days of […]
When I first started the Passionate About OSS site / blog many years ago, I was lucky to get a handful of views per day. It’s grown by many multiples since then, fortunately. The launch of The Blue Book OSS/BSS Vendor Directory generated some exciting metrics yesterday. The directory alone came within 5 pageviews of […]
We’re excited to announce that “The Blue Book OSS/BSS Vendor Directory” has officially gone live here at https://passionateaboutoss.com/directory It provides a comprehensive directory of over 400 suppliers that produce OSS, BSS and/or related network management tools. Company details, product details and functionality classifications are included. Every network operator has a unique set of needs from […]
We’ve spoken at length about TM Forum’s, “Time to kill the RFP? Reinventing IT procurement for the 2020s,” report so far this week. We’ve also spoken about the feeling that the OSS/BSS RFP (Request For Proposal) still has relevance in some situations… as long as it’s more of a lighter-touch than most. We’ve spoken about […]
Yesterday’s post described the approach to get from 400+ possible OSS/BSS suppliers/products down to a more manageable list without: Having to get into significant discussions with vendors (yet) Gathering all your stakeholders together to prepare a detailed list of requirements We’ll call this “the long list,” which might consist of 5-20 suppliers. We use this […]
You may have noticed that we’ve run a series of posts about OSS/BSS procurement, and about the RFP process by association. One of the first steps in the traditional procurement process is preparing a strategy and detailed set of requirements. As TM Forum’s, “Time to kill the RFP? Reinventing IT procurement for the 2020s,” report describes: […]
As per yesterday’s post, I’ll continue to reference a TM Forum report called, “Time to kill the RFP? Reinventing IT procurement for the 2020s” today. Mark Newman and the team have captured and discussed so many layers to the OSS/BSS procurement process. There’s no doubt the current stereotypical RFP approach to procurement is broken. It […]
Earlier this year, the TM Forum published a really insightful report called, “Time to kill the RFP? Reinventing IT procurement for the 2020s.” There are so many layers to the OSS/BSS procurement discussion and Mark Newman and team have done a fantastic job of capturing them. We’ll expand on a few of those layers in […]
The industry we work in is worth tens of billions of dollars annually. We rely on that investment to fund the OSS/BSS projects (and ops/maintenance tasks) that keeps many thousands of us busy. Those funds originate from project sponsors in the buyers’ organisations taking a leap of faith in kicking off an OSS project. For […]
“From watching ESPN, I’d learned about the power of information bombardment. ESPN strafes its viewers with an almost hysterical amount of data and details. Scrolling boxes. Panels. Bars. Graphics. Multi-angle camera perspectives. When exposed to a surfeit of data, men tend to feel more masculine and in command. Do most men bother to decipher these […]
Seems this post from last week has triggered some really interesting debate – Is your service assurance really service assurance?? (Part 5). It was a post that looked into collecting end-to-end service metrics rather than our traditional method of collecting network device events/metrics and trying to reverse-engineer to form a service-level perspective. Thought I’d give […]
In yesterday’s fourth part of this series about modern network service assurance, we wrote this: I also just stumbled upon OpenTelemetry, an open source project designed to capture traces / metrics / logs from apps / microservices. It intrigued me because just as you have the concept of traces / metrics / logs for apps, […]
In yesterday’s article, we asked whether what many know as service assurance can rightfully be called service assurance. Yesterday’s, like today’s, post was inspired by an interesting white paper from the Netrounds team titled, “Reimagining Service Assurance in the Digital Service Provider Era.” Below are three insightful tables from the Netrounds white paper: Table 1 […]
