OSS collaboration rooms. Getting to the coal-face

A number of years ago I heard about an OSS product that introduced collaborative rooms for network operators to collectively solve challenging network health events. It was in line with some of my own thinking about the use of collaboration techniques to solve cross-domain or complex events. But the concept hasn’t caught on in the way that I expected. I was curious why, so I asked around some friends and colleagues who are hands-on managing networks every day.

The answer showed that I hadn’t got close enough to understanding the psyche at the coal-face. It seems that operators have a preference for the current approach, the tick and flick of trouble tickets until the solution forms and the problem is solved.

This shows the psyche of collaboration at a micro scale. I wonder if it holds true at a macro scale too?

No CSP has an everywhere footprint (admittedly cloud providers are close to everywhere though, in part through global presence, in part through coverage of the access domain via their own networks and/or OTT connectivity). For customers that need to cross geo-footprints, carriers take a tick and flick approach in terms of OSS. The OSS of one carrier passes orders to the other carrier’s OSS. Each OSS stays within the bounds of its organisation’s locus of control (see this blog for further context).

To me, there seems to be an opportunity for carriers to get out of their silo. To leverage collaboration for speed, coverage, etc by designing offerings in OSS design rooms rather than standards workshops. A global product catalog sandpit as it were for carriers to design offerings in. Every carrier’s service offering / API / contract resides there for other carriers to interact with.

But once again, I may not be close enough to understanding the psyche at the coal-face. If you work at this coal-face, I’d love to get your opinions on why this would or would not work.

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