“There are ratings and rankings that ostensibly exist to give us information (and we are supposed to use that information to change our behavior).
But if we don’t know what variables matter, how is it supposed to be useful?
Just because it can be easily measured with two digits doesn’t mean that it’s accurate, important or useful.
[Marketers learned a long time ago that people love rankings and daily specials. The best way to boost sales is to put something in a little box on the menu, and, when in doubt, rank things. And sometimes people even make up the rankings.]”
Seth Godin here.
Are there any rankings that are made up in OSS? Our OSS collect an amazing amount of data so there’s rarely a need to make up the data we present.
Are they based on hidden variables? Generally, we use raw counters and / or well known metrics so we’re usually quite transparent with what our OSS present.
What about when we’re trying to select the right vendor to fulfill the OSS needs of our organisation? As Seth states, Just because it can be easily measured with two digits* doesn’t mean that it’s accurate, important or useful. [* In this case, I’m thinking of a 2 x 2 matrix].
The interesting thing about OSS ranking systems is that there is so much nuance in the variables that matter. There are potentially hundreds of evaluation criteria and even vast contrasts in how to interpret a given criteria.
For example, a criteria might be “time to activate a service.” A vendor might have a really efficient workflow for activating single services manually but have no bulk load or automation interface. For one operator (which does single activations manually), the TTAS metric for that product would be great, but for another operator (which does thousands of activations a day and tries to automate), the TTAS metric for the same product would be awful.
As much as we love ranking systems… there are hundreds of products on the market (in some cases, hundreds of products in a single operator’s OSS stack), each fitting unique operator needs differently… so a 2 x 2 matrix is never going to cut it as a vendor selection tool… not even as a short-listing tool.
Better to build yourself a vendor selection framework. You can find a few OSS product / vendor selection hints here based on the numerous vendor / product selections I’ve helped customers with in the past.
Standing out in a highly saturated and fragmented OSS market can be really difficult. We’re regularly involved in bake-offs where we see dozens of OSS
One of the things I love about my job is all the vendor demos I get to see. Product demos are one of the four
Have you read the book, “The 4-hour work week” by Tim Ferris? It was one of those relatively rare books that inspired a complete mindset
Over the years, we’ve been involved in many OSS procurement events and have seen a variety of different pricing models proposed by vendors. Being software,
Here at Passionate About OSS, we are exactly that – Passionate About OSS (Operational Support Systems). We’re also passionate about BSS, NMS, or any other names you call the tools that help to operationalise your network.
