Does your organisation have the culture to handle new OSS models?
We’ve recently talked about the two service provider business model extremes – OTT / DSP (Over the Top or DSP) versus REIT / TaaU (Telco as a Utility) are affecting OSS. The fast-twitch OSS that services the OTT / DSP model is bringing about some fascinating changes in the way service providers procure “assets.” They’re […]
How does OSS architecture cope with exponential growth
Yesterday’s blog covered how exponential growth in ICT industries has been (and will continue to be) a challenge for all of us in OSS-land. We’ve already seen some fundamental changes in OSS in recent years to be able to cope with the massive growth in device counts, bandwidth demands, etc. We’ve seen hyper-scaled hardware/software platforms […]
How can OSS keep up with exponential progress?
We’ve all heard of Moore’s Law, which predicts the semiconductor industry’s ability to exponentially increase transistor density in an integrated circuit. “Moore’s prediction proved accurate for several decades, and has been used in the semiconductor industry to guide long-term planning and to set targets for research and development. Advancements in digital electronics are strongly linked to […]
How would your OSS handle a troop of chaos monkeys?
A recent blog discussed the concept of running fire drills on your OSS to see how your organisation would handle outages. In Monday’s blog, we discussed where OSS customers are going to be and what their requirements are going to look like. The “Telcos as OTT players” model will be hyperscaled and more “transient by […]
Where does Sam Walton think OSS customers are going to be?
“Don’t build where they are. Build where they’re going to be.” Sam Walton. Sounds like a persuasive argument and not dissimilar to Wayne Gretzky’s famous quote about skating to where the ice hockey puck is going to be. Sam Walton had plenty of proof to back up this claim (as did Gretzky). Walton was after […]
ECOMP treading on Open-O MANO toes?
“AT&T made kind of a big deal in July about working with the Linux Foundation to create an open source group around its Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management, and Policy (ECOMP) platform. But the Linux Foundation has not yet announced ECOMP as an official project. Perhaps there’s a snag due to the fact that ECOMP includes […]
48% drop in store visits in three years
“There were 34 billion visits to US stores in 2010. By 2013, that number had plummeted 48% to 17.6 billion, according to Elite Wealth Management. As consumers make more of their purchases online, the challenge of engaging consumers in store is accelerating the rise of ‘experiential shopping’.” David Kelnar in a fascinating trend analysis on […]
Managing automations
“Making the business case for NFV isn’t difficult in one sense; we already know that the only thing that can really drive NFV from its current point to early success is operations cost reduction through service automation. The problem for vendors is that only seven or eight vendors can actually provide the essential tools. You […]
ECOMP (Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management & Policy)
AT&T’s ECOMP (Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management & Policy) Architecture White Paper can be found here. It provides a reference architecture and a breakdown of the components that AT&T are using to manage their virtualised network functions. It’s an interesting take on MANO / OSS in a carrier environment, especially figure 3 that compares and contrasts […]
Customer demand influence
“Global telecommunications study: navigating the road to 2020.” In the study listed above, executives at some of the world’s largest CSPs indicate that the players most likely to disrupt their industry is OTT app providers. Any thoughts on why they might be perceived to be 30x more influential than technology specialists, or 5x more influential […]
Extending the OSS value chain
“To avoid commoditization, telcos should become the focal point of the extended value chain, focusing on digital services and taking advantage of their traditional competencies.” “Global telecommunications study: navigating the road to 2020.” The graph above tells a story about the changing share of wallet (end-to-end value chain) in the telecommunications sector. The three dials […]
TM Forum Open APIs
“Until now, communications service providers could not match their digital native counterparts when it came to delivering what customers want, when and where they want it. Now there is a real opportunity to close that gap through a number of interrelated, big trends that are happening in parallel. This includes transforming their infrastructure through network […]
The small-grid OSS platform
“Perhaps the most egregious platform failure is to simply not see the platform play at all. It is also one of the hardest for traditional firms to avoid. Firms guilty of this oversight never get past the idea that they sell products when they could be building ecosystems. Sony, Hewlett Packard (HP), and Garmin all […]
Independent NFVI interoperability test results
Results from the world’s first independent interoperability evaluation of NFVI (Network Function Virtualisation Infrastructure), carried out by NIA and EANTC, can be found here. It provides an interesting read. Vendors include Cisco, Juniper, Ciena, Fortniet, Nokia, Dell and more. Juniper’s perspective on this testing can be found here.
Not just orchestration but more orchestratable
“The utter complexity of huge, standardized software systems also explains the death of big software. Enormous whole-company projects are often beyond the capabilities of even the most experienced project and program managers – especially when there’s never 100% consensus about the need for such a draconian project in the first place. The cloud has also […]
4 Container Networking Tools to Know
Here’s a great article from Linux.com about container networks and network managers that our OSS will be interfacing with increasingly in the future.
Big OSS or little oss?
The jungle drums continue to beat – does OSS have a future? I keep hearing people discussing its imminent demise. OSS can have many issues and the term OSS possibly doesn’t have the greatest name in all circles because of these issues. But I can’t go past the fact that even if the term OSS, […]
The OSS Whale Curve
The diagram below shows what is known as The Whale Curve. It shows a graph of the relative profitability of each product in your product mix. From the book, “Waging War on Complexity Costs,” by Steven A Wilson and Andrei Perumal. You might be wondering how a profitability graph could ever peak at over 100%. […]
How big is too big for OSS?
“This sounds like a joke now – “there was a website that listed every single website that there was”. Yahoo actually worked pretty well when there were 20,000 websites, just as a book shop with 20,000 titles works pretty well. But the Yahoo directory peaked at 3.2m sites and at that that point it definitely […]
Huawei’s strategic open source play
“The knee-jerk reaction to open source is… well, it’s free. But it’s not that simple. Companies can craft strategic open source projects that complement and enhance and build momentum behind its own products. Huawei has been clear that this is part of its strategy.” Scott Raynovich here on SDx Central. Scott’s report goes on to […]