The Goldilocks OSS story

We all know the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears where Goldilocks chooses the option that’s not too heavy, not too light, but just right.

The same model applies to OSS – finding / building a solution that’s not too heavy, not too light, but just right. To be honest, we probably tend to veer towards the too heavy, especially over time. We put more complexity into our architectures, integrations and customisations… because we can… which end up burdening us and our solutions.

A perfect example is AT&T offering its ECOMP project (now part of the even bigger Linux Foundation Network Fund) up for open source in the hope that others would contribute and help mature it. As a fairytale analogy, it’s an admission that it’s too heavy even for one of the global heavyweights to handle by itself.

The ONAP Charter has some great plans including, “…real-time, policy-driven orchestration and automation of physical and virtual network functions that will enable software, network, IT and cloud providers and developers to rapidly automate new services and support complete lifecycle management.”

These are fantastic ambitions to strive for, especially at the Pappa Bear end of the market. I have huge admiration for those who are creating and chasing bold OSS plans. But what about for the large majority of customers that fall into the Goldilocks category? Is our field of vision so heavy (ie so grand and so far into the future) that we’re missing the opportunity to solve the business problems of our customers and make a difference for them with lighter solutions today?

TM Forum’s Digital Transformation World is due to start in just over two weeks. It will be fascinating to see how many of the presentations and booths consider the Goldilocks requirements. There probably won’t be many because it’s just not as sexy a story as one that mentions heavy solutions like policy-driven orchestration, zero-touch automation, AI / ML / analytics, self-scaling / self-healing networks, etc.

[I should also note that I fall into the category of loving to listen to the heavy solutions too!! ]

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