OSS Line

Dropbox – For Confused and Forgetful Mobile Workers

Off topic, but it’s very rare that I recommend a product on this blog. This one has really impressed me.

I work on a lot of files in a lot of different places, and it confuses me.

I work in an office, at home, in the coffee shop and on the road. At each of those location I might be using a different PC or laptop. As a result I have relied on USB keys to keep my latest files with me. But I always have sync issue (which is my latest copy? can I delete files to make space on my USB key? did I just edit the wrong version?). And I don’t always remember my portable storage.

I’ve been looking for an online solution to this problem and my file backup needs.

Dropbox seems to be the one. This isn’t simply online storage of files like, say, MS Office Live. Dropbox syncs files between PCs via online services and keeps an online copy ready for access from any Pc. And saves up to 30 days of versions in case you delete something you didn’t mean to!

Ticks all the boxes. Sync, back-up, online access, online sharing.

Use this link to check out the free 2GB version and get an extra 250MB for using my ‘introduction’ link (I get an extra 250MB too!).

Get Dropbox 2GB and an upgrade of 250MB, free,  here.

Well worth a look for the mobile OSS professional.

OSS Intelligence

Last week I spoke at a small workshop about how artificial intelligence can be used in multi-layer network planning, optimisation and fulfilment. Multi-layer networks are causing service providers a bit of a headache at the moment. Typically they comprise MPLS or Ethernet over a DWDM optical transport network. On paper it looks quite neat: Very high capacity transport that can carry pretty much any traffic type, and super-flexible IP services on top.

It is generally agreed that the effort is worth-while in order to offer high bandwidth services and provide a platform for rapid introduction of new types of service. But the PowerPoint diagrams don’t translate to the real world so easily.

A few of the problems service providers face are:

• Migrating legacy services is complex.
• There’s a wide choice of DWDM deployment options, each with their own pros and cons.
• Most established planning systems are unable to design services across more than one network layer at once.

Most of the presenters at the workshop were addressing the last point. I had thought, by talking about artificial intelligence, I would be providing a unique ‘intellectually rigorous’ approach to solving the problem.

Wrong.

While I was the only one talking about A.I. in general, all but one of the OSS vendors attending were pitching ‘intelligent’ solution. And all of those were start-ups, including Aria Networks who I was representing.

So it seems intelligent planning is an emerging solution in OSS. Certainly amongst this group of hardware & software vendors and service providers, there was a clear expectation that intelligence is essential to enable effective, optimal planning. But few approaches are actually well understood, and certainly no one approach has emerged as a clear leader. 

What do I mean by intelligent? In researching my presentation I found no established definition that satisfied the problems and needs of telco. So, to quote myself:

“Applying better algorithms and better analysis to out-perform the capabilities of scripted, procedural, and BPEL approaches.” – Me (Last Week)

For network planning, the core requirement is optimal routing (or re-routing) of large numbers of circuits and services. Procedural approaches don’t scale simply because the search space is too big: Too many services; too many devices; too many links; to many network layers; too many parameters; too many constraints. You can’t crack this with brute force.

Intelligent planning has to find a way to reduce the search-space, balance all the requirements, while still being sure that the optimum solution is found. Various technologies, algorithms and approaches exist, such as:

• Neural nets
• Multiple integer programming and linear programming
• Genetic evolution
• Heuristic-driven path finding

The challenge facing OSS vendors and service providers is a lack of understanding of non-deterministic A.I. techniques. Much A.I. is well proven in other fields, yet use in OSS has been limited until recently. There’s a huge gap between peoples understanding of a procedural solution (a number of tasks processed from start to finish) and a non-deterministic approach which is beyond the understanding of most users (me included usually). Yet it is only non-deterministic intelligent solutions that will be able to continue to optimally manage capital expenditure in multi-layer next-generation networks.

So, we have some work to do. Like inventory ten years ago, and service catalogs three years ago, it turns out that OSS marketing is all about education again.

Celona Gets a Wodge of Cash

Celona, one of the more interesting start-ups out there, has announced a tidy £2 million investment from VCs firm Seraphim Capital and existing investors.

Over the last year Celona has started to demonstrate progress in winning business and deploying their data & process migration solution at telcos like Telstra and Swisscom. Along with getting in to the Red Herring Global 100, this further investment in Celona suggests that the industry is starting to appreciate their unique approach to dealing with a problem that is usually ignored then subsequently bodged by throwing professional-services bodies at the problem.

Seraphim already have skin in the OSS game with their existing investment in planning and optimization start-up (and employer of yours-truly) Aria Networks.

More information can be found in the Celona and Seraphim PR.

Mr Pullen Goes to Aria Networks

I blog about what I know and what I like. So, in the interest of transparency you may like to know that I am now working with the network planning and optimization start-up, Aria Networks. And I’m really getting in to it. Such an OSS geek…

I am starting to understand the subtleties of the cool technology Aria’s products are based on, and that means more blogging on this part of the OSS industry.

What I am finding interesting so far is the difference in core technical approach, compared to CrAmdocs/Telcordia/Netcracker.

The Big OSS companies have products based on inventory and process automation. In developing product or offering solutions the first question they ask is ‘how do we leverage our inventory data?’, the second being ‘what process shall we build around checking and updating this inventory?’.

Aria Networks starts with a core, generic process: Routing. It is, after all, what managing and using a network is all about. This is then applied to a problem, such as bulk re-optimization of a network, where services are analyzed concurrently for optimal network use, QoS and resilience.

The upshot of this approach to OSS products is that you get the intelligence out of the box with Aria and can leverage existing inventory or network discovery products to feed the planning, optimization or forecasting  analysis.

CTOs of services providers and OSS vendors have been talking about unlocking the value of their data for a while now. It’s start-ups like Celona, Ontology and Aria Networks that are delivering innovative technology that makes the most of this data.

CommBat Christmas Party

Last night was par-tay-time at the inaugural CommBat Christmas shin-dig.

CommBat is an informal group comprising communication professionals living/working in and around Bath (get it? COMMunications BATh?). Conceived by Richard Mishra and Peter Briscoe a couple of months ago, it’s got a LinkedIn presence to go with the clever name.

I must admit I was enthusiastic when I heard about the formation of CommBat. I figured there’d be some opportunity for me to do talks, show lots of PowerPoint slides, argue about interface specifications… But turns out there’s not much emphasis on that. It’s predominantly social and a bit networky.

Indeed, that was very much the vibe last night. With the inevitably large proportion of current and ex-CrAmdocs folk (and their partners) turning up, it had the atmosphere of a reunion. Once a few drinks had been drunk, there was plenty of opportunity to network: Many ex-Cramerites are still in the OSS industry. I spotted people (often pretty senior in their respective OSS divisions)  from:

• Amdocs (well, obviously)
• Telcordia
• Sidonis (event, root-cause, impact analysis start-up in Bath)
• Aria Networks (planning, optimization start-up in Chippenham)
• Alcatel-Lucent
• Vodafone Group
• CACI

Hats-off to Richard and Pete for organizing it. I was lucky enough to have a great office party the day before too (big week!), but with social budgets shrinking and partners rarely getting an invite any more, it was great to have an inclusive event with old-friends.

Search for the CommBat LinkedIn group, sign up, and come along to the next event.

More pictures of the night at the CommBat Flickr group.

Merry Crimbo and happy New Year!

UK Telco Stagnant in 2008

The perfect story for a damp gray December day.

UK regulator OFCOM has published their Communications Market Report 2009, putting everyone in a terribly bad mood by pointing out that, for the first time since they started collecting statistics in 1992, the industry experienced virtually zero annual growth.

This is, I guess, no great surprise to any of you. OSS projects have been limited to small scale efforts to reduce cost-of-ownership and a few already committed big ‘transformations’. BSS has had a little bit more focus, mainly in an effort to make some money out of the latest shiny objects like app stores.

In late 2009, things seem to be picking up a bit, but we could all do with a boost.

Of course, the biggest factor impacting our industry is the lack of a true successor to The Crazy Frog. I mean, come on, that was back in 2005. We need more artistic innovation like that to drive mobile downloads and save telco.

Surely there’s a gap in the market here? What with the trend to re-hash retro favourites on screen, stage and mobile-device, surely we could resurrect a popular British icon to front a few ring tones, novelty apps, and flash games? An icon of joy and light-entertainment to cheer us all up?

Noel Edmonds. How much for exclusive mobile rights to Mr Blobby?

More analysis on OFCOM’s report at the always excellent Telecom TV.

Tribold 4 - Newer! Customer Focused-er!

News coming out of TMW Americas where I am, sadly, not this year. J E Pullen Limited’s budget wouldn’t stretch to a jolly in Orlando.

But those guys from Tribold are out there, bigging up their products and announcing Tribold 4 (TM. Mustn’t forget the TM).

I was somewhat shocked to read the lead paragraph of the PR stating:

“…new features and functionality based on direct feedback from customers ..”

Actually, that’s rather good. You don’t see that often enough in OSS do you? I mean most OSS companies are busy playing at ‘me too’ or telling service providers what they need. Good for Tribold.

What new in Tribold’s updated enterprise product management offering? Oh, some GUI stuff, some improved configuration methods, more centrally managed stuff, and so on. In short, yes, it looks like the sort of things a customer would have asked for. 

Check out the Tribold 4 press release to find out more, or if you’re lucky enough to be at Tele Management World Orlando 2009, go chat to them; they’re usually very nice folks…

RiverMuse Goes Commercial

Ah ha! As I postulated in an earlier entry, RiverMuse has just released a commercial, chargeable, version of the fault management product.

I guess it was possible they might have gone for revenues purely from services relating to deployment of their free open source ‘core’ platform. But it was pretty unlikely. They’ve taken a common approach by providing a free core and an ‘enterprise’ version (ES – Enterprise Subscription, as they call it).

What do you get for your money, compared to the freebie version?

At the moment the data sheet seems to suggest it’s:

• Release from GPL license constraints (you’d normally be obliged to feedback all your own code changes to RiverMuse )
• Indemnity (a common requirement from customers deploying open source, so IBM/SCO/Microsoft don’t come a sue them for using patented technology, or something).
• A support contract.

Hmmm… But no value-add functionality? No advanced scaling options added? No enterprise management, security or admin tools?

Ok, maybe the core version has everything an enterprise would need in terms of scalability and platform options.

I still predict more chargeable, functional, product offerings from RiverMuse in the future…

Why Open Source OSS and BSS Products?

With the release of RiverMuse open source 'core'  product a number of people have been asking me about the pros and cons of open source. It's new to our industry, so the implication and benefits (to customers and vendors) are not well understood.

above. thanks to http://www.flickr.com/photos/daviderickson/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Herewith, my take on it...

Is open source  really new to the OSS/BSS industry?

Well, ok, no. It depends how you look at it. Many large telcos have had open source policies for many years. British Telecom, for example, had a two-pronged approach to IT platforms (including OSS and BSS platforms) that preferred one commercial stack and one linux-based stack. The benefit being:

1. They could buy in, and support,  open source platforms a bit cheaper than commercial platforms.
2. They could use Point 1 to drive down the prices charged by their commercial product vendors.

Use of open source platforms, as in the operating system and some key components like Apache web server, is pretty well established in the wider IT world. It's a low risk strategy.

Open source telco applications are much rarer. Business critical, 24/7, applications even more so.

Many of the big-vendor OSS products were ported to run on Linux a few years ago. Few get open-source-ified above the operating system level. Other open source components, like MySQL databases and jBoss application servers, have no support outside of small, tactical, solutions (until now).

Bits of open source underpinning OSS/BSS solutions are not uncommon; A complete stack of open source, supporting a major OSS process, is something new.

Will the quality be up to business-critical standards?

I expect so. If it's not, that is nothing to do with it being open source.

The fear of open source tends to be:

1. It's written by kids in their bedroom, with insufficient control over design and implementation.
2. The kids aren't even using their own code. They're ripping off IBM/Microsoft/SCO/Whoever. No one's checking the origins. You're going to end up on the wrong end of a lawsuit for using unlicensed code.

This argument has been doing the circuit for many years, mainly being aimed at big targets like Linux and Apache. Both have stood up to the test remarkably well. Quality is at least comparable with commercial products. The big IPR lawsuits have pretty much failed.

Any responsible CIO or IT team should consider these issues, but that should be equally true for software from commercial organizations as well.

A key consideration here is the nature of the OSS/BSS industry, and RiverMuse is a fine example: Bedroom coders aren't writing OSS applications. Professionals, managed within proper businesses, are writing the code.

Outside of the high-profile ones, most long term open source projects are almost entirely coded by a team within, or sponsored  by, one commercial organization.

How will RiverMuse make any money?

There's a few different open source business models, two of which are:

1. Release a fully-featured open source product and generate revenue from services and support only.
2. Release an open-source product with core functionality, sell services and support, but also sell closed-source complimentary products.

Model 1 is most peoples idea of open-source, but it's Model 2 is where the larger open-source companies expect to see revenue. For open-source platforms, like Red Hat Linux, and both MySQL and Ingres databases, the core product is free while the 'enterprise' or 'server' versions are chargeable.

I would expect RiverMuse to be releasing only the core product as free, open-source. In fact, in some recent coverage the term 'core' has been used to refer to the community release.

Announcing an open-source product is also a good marketing move. It generates buzz; I've seen far more blog coverage of RiverMuse than any other recent product launch.

In some cases it may also mean RiverMuse gets a foot in the door. Some OSS deployments exist by evolution rather than creationism. If a few companies start to deploy RiverMuse as a cheap, possibly short-term solution, then they have a stronger starting point for commercial negotiations.

That said, I don't expect many big, tier-1, customers to be won this way. Selling to large organizations is no easier with open-source than it is with commercial, closed-source products.

Should established vendors go open-source?

Sure, why not? Or, if not open-source, then perhaps free core products with at least useful APIs. Some sort of 'community' release.

Apart from it being a useful sales and marketing strategy (see previous answer) it offers other benefits to the vendor:

Allows them to focus on building value propositions for new solutions (catalog, BPEL, service management, data federation, and so on) rather than having to justify the cost of a big bag of pricey products. For example, free inventory but you pay for automation and activation.

It can build a community of companies enhancing the core product or offering value-add functionality. Encouraging more development, such as the Sincera SASI product, would be A Good Thing, extending the OSS vendor’s functionality at little cost to them.

Actually, I'm not fussed as to whether a free or open-source version of the vendor's products are released. I believe that open-source offers limited benefit over free (but closed-source) software in our industry, simply because there isn't actually a community of independent developers wanting to tweak existing products. The need is more about allowing third-parties to configure, integrate and compliment core OSS capabilities. It’s more about allowing add-ons, adapters, interfaces, and cool GUIs to be developed, most of which would be through normal customization methods rather than hacking core code.

Tribold and Aldous (Updated)

Tribold have issued a PR on their new sales and marketing partnership with Aldous.

Tribold provide product catalog capabilities, while Aldous sits ‘in front’ with order capture functions.

It’s a sensible match. A criticism leveled at product catalog solutions is that, in isolation, they do not significantly improve service design or fulfillment times. Having to configure all the integrated systems, like order capture/management, billing, automation, activation, e.t.c. means they do not, on their own, revolutionize the speed at which new services can be introduced. Therefore, it makes sense to start providing joint marketing with complimentary products that can also improve new services’ time to market.

This needs to be data-driven. An off-the-shelf integration. When the Tribold product catalog configuration changes this should be reflected in what Aldous provides via its GUI to order capture staff. Aldous key selling message is around reflecting order/product rules in its GUI, and this would need to include options and constraints configured by the service provider’s product managers using Tribold.

The PR isn’t clear about whether an actual adapter between the products exists:

“…global sales and marketing partnership to deliver an integrated solution…”.

Hmmm… I’d say that means they’re pitching a joint-value-proposition today with the solution being delivered by their services teams. I’ll look for clarification…

UPDATE: Info back from Tribold clarifies that there is an out-of-the-box connector with data mappings. It’s configurable where necessary. Which is nice.

Automating Telcordia Granite with SASI

I found this LightReading article a few days ago, about a product that enables better automation of tasks that are usually GUI-driven in Granite.

Sincera, a Granite ‘boutique’ system integrator, has shipped their SASI (Simple Automated Service Interface) product to Time Warner Cable. The PR extols the virtues of using the Granite APIs rather than hacking the database directly. Well, yeah. It doesn’t go in to much detail beyond saying it reduces time and effort for data entry and data change tasks.

My assumption is that this is a type of ‘macro’ functionality. OSS vendor all have their own technical automation, and sometimes business (BPEL-style) workflow, but tend to lack user automation tasks. For example, if I wanted to find, check and rename a field in all my customer edge router records, I either do a lot of manual changes or I have to write a fairly inflexible piece of automation code. The platform to enable automation can also be quite expensive.

Sincera have spotted that its relatively easy to query the database of an OSS inventory, apply a bit of logic, then fire off API calls to make bulk changes. It’s A Good Thing, and I bet it wasn’t more than a couple of man-months of development on their part.

The risk with This Sort of Thing is that you over-empower the user. A simple front end that allows users to quickly find and modify many thousands of objects in the inventory can lead to some big mistakes being made. Does SASI or Granite have enough checks to limit run-away edits, or set the scope of a user modification? Hope so.

‘Undo’ in a large-scale, multi-user environment is not an easy thing to get right.

Concerns aside, I like this. OSS automation has not seen much development lately, other than in service catalog solutions. This addresses a basic requirement. Furthermore, its great to see third-parties releasing productized add-ons.

Edgeware - Enabling Next-Next-Gen OSS

"Edgeware: Application managing a layer of APIs and services which allow third-parties to interact with communication service providers business and operations support systems. A key infrastructure element for enabling the Telco 2.0 business model."

Sounds convincing, but what exactly is it?

Yet to be determined...

What Will Your Product Do When It Grows Up?

There comes a time in every product's life when a difficult decision must be made: What will it do for a living?

Having been conceived out of one of your recent telco projects, your new database/automation/integration/whatever solution is coming of age. It's been productized and recently v1.0 has been successfully deployed at a second tier-2 telco.

Do you:

A. Partner with a large system integrator (SI) and help it to become a generalist, capable of offering something to every enterprise system?

B. Take a vocational path and specialize it into a your niche area of technology in the telco industry?

Let’s Go Large!

The first option, a generalized solution, is tempting. You look at other products, perhaps a couple of years older than yours, and see them doing very well working with IBM/HP/Logica/Whoever. They've been involved in their first few projects. They're on the ladder to great things. The opportunities are endless. That's the life you want for your young product, right?

You spend the next 6-12 months preparing your product for a glittering career in middleware. The developers are as enthusiastic as you: They've been writing well architected code that can be refactored to do almost anything. They strip out the telco-specific logic and UI elements. They add data driven configuration, and open API, and code plug-in support.

The upgraded product gets it's first real job, in a telco funnily enough. You hand-hold it through to completion of the project. It's a success! Issue the press release!

Growing Pains

Then things just don't go quite the way you had hoped for your product. It gets on OK, to be fair: A couple of complicated (but quite low paid)deployments with banks. A short term project with an electricity company.

The product proves itself useful, but it never quite manages to get on well with others. Its managers at the SI are concerned that it needs too much configuration and as such is taking far too long to show results. They're increasingly reluctant to include it in projects unless you're there to help out. You stretch your resources to help your product deliver the goods, and try to learn the needs of a variety of quite different industries.

Now, after a couple of years, those products that have worked hard in narrow, slightly geeky, industries are suddenly doing well. Ok, no-one’s talking about them at dinner parties, but they’re delivering great results to their customers and earning an impressive income thanks to their unique benefits.

Time for a family meeting. What now for your product? It's not too late to change it’s not happy working with an SI.

Do you:

A. Invest in developing tool-sets, documentation and training to enable rapid, economical projects delivered by the SI?

B. Accept that maybe telco is the right vocation after all and invest in specializing the product's out-of-the-box functionality to a specific set of needs?

Generic or Niche Product?

Did you start in telco? Did you come up with a great product to solve a telco problem then realize your talented developers created something massively flexible?

Don’t be too quick to give up the technology heritage of your company to broaden you target market. You lose a significant advantage in being able to talk to your customers knowledgably and understand their needs. You’ll also have to sell at least twice as hard to convince customers that they need more middleware and the associated services to deploy it.

Generic Middleware

Yes, you can make money from generic solutions. Platforms, services and middleware all have their place. Be aware it’s a different game from selling solutions to your peers.

To sell middleware to a wide audience you have to invest in marketing communications, developer tools, education and support. Your focus becomes enabling everyone (internal and partners) to promote the solution and then rapidly deliver your product.

Niche Products

Keep your product in a niche, and you can leverage both your domain knowledge and a product that is already tuned and configured to the industry’s needs. You give the market functionality with a clear benefit or RoI, and a more predictable project scope.

Investment must focus on market intelligence, improving functionality and packaging pre-configured solution for your smaller target markets.

Open Source OSS – RiverMuse Launched

Yesterday, the RiverMuse team announced the release of their open source fault management platform.

It’s their marketing audacity that struck me when I first happened upon RiverMuse.

Firstly, and most obviously, that name. For those readers without 5+ years in the industry, it borrows from RiverSoft and MicroMuse, both innovators in fault management systems back in the late Nineties and early Naughties.

Secondly, their positioning, which clearly goes after existing customers of MicroMuse Netcool (and subsequent owner, IBM Tivoli). RiverMuse are offering some level of backward compatibility with MicroMuse Netcool, and innovation as an antidote to Netcool/Tivoli  stagnation.

And, it’s open source! Free(ish)! In our industry?!

Can they actually do all that? Bullish marketing. Nice.

Check out the news on the RiverMuse site. Some PR that actually makes interesting reading.

Is this, finally, the emergence of credible open source for OSS?

Creaner on Cloud Computing

Martin Creaner’s blog teaches us the fundamentals of cloud computing, but where's the TM Forum leadership?

The hype and hope of cloud computing continues. There's an opportunity here, and I'm happy to see more contributions to the debate on how service providers can embrace new architectures. Frequently, though, they lack any meat, or real understanding of what cloud computing actually is.

above. Cloud computing architecture. Click to enlarge

Martin Creaner, President of Tele Management Forum, has recently blogged his two pennies worth. He's somebody senior management listen too, so it's good to see he's written a piece that brings clarity to the whole cloud thing.

Take a look at Martin's article on the TMF blog.

But What About The Cons?

Martin is a little too convinced that cloud computing will be the Next Big Thing. There are plenty of potential 'fatal flaws' in the concept that deter  users today and could easily scupper the movement in the next few years. Just two of them:

No portability. You can't pick-up a Google AppEngine application and reinstall it in Amazon EC2 or Microsoft Azure. Each cloud platform is proprietary. Really proprietary. If you thought supporting applications on Solaris and Windows Server was a hassle, this is nothing compared with cloud computing.

Limited Functionality. OSS and BSS applications are non-trivial. They rely on complex business logic, workflow engines and sophisticated features of relational databases. Most of this is not available in the cloud. You get Java POJOs, a component model, and a flat data store that's got less functionality than Excel.

It may just be a matter of time before these problems are solved. We're starting to see Java support in clouds, and some platforms, like Azure, are expected to introduce proper SQL databases. They better get a move on though...

Here's What the Cloud Can Do For You

The high-light of Martin's piece is his clear explanation of the benefit of cloud computing: You get the resources you need quicker, and pay less up front for them, compared with procuring your own servers and software.

These simple financial savings and time savings are the basis of the cloud proposition. Maybe that's a little disappointing? Were you expecting it to be whizzy-bang technology that revolutionized the way you did X, Y or Z? No. Cloud computing's strength is that the fundamentals are simple, measurable, benefits.

above. Benefits of cloud computing. Click to enlarge

More, Please, Martin

So, Martin's a cloud computing fan. This needs to lead in to some technology leadership from TM Forum. Sorry, but despite Martin's suggestions NGOSS, or any other SOA initiative, is not an enabler of cloud computing. SOA is architecture agnostic, that's the point of it, so having SOA contracts does not make implementing a specific back-end architecture any easier.

The potential, revolutionary, use of clouds is, as Martin surmises, in building a scalable architecture for Telco 2.0-style upstream partners to 'plug-in' to the network and OSS/BSS infrastructure. Partners and service providers can then go mad and deliver the massive suck-it-and-see approach to products that Keith Willetts (TM Forum) has been talking about lately. With the economics and scalability of the cloud, entry costs for new products and partners is small. Scaling-up a surprise success is affordable and, most importantly, possible.

To make this a reality we need APIs, contracts, SLAs and processes that allow partners to run their businesses through service provider infrastructure, much like retail vendors do today on the Amazon platform.

TM Forum would be doing the industry a big favor, while restoring its reputation for innovation, if it delivered a specification for a model Telco 2.0 infrastructure.

Telcordia at Sonaecom

At the start of this week Telcordia announced an OSS project… or something… at Portugal’s Sonaecom. Here’s the PR.

Not a bad PR either, as it actually contains some detail. Shock! But please take a look, because I can’t work out whether it’s a new deal or not…

Telcordia products will be used to support Sonaecom’s fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network to over 1 million customers. Not surprising then that the main product mentioned is Network Engineer, Telcordia’s long established physical network inventory and GIS solution.

All good, but the PR also mentions that Sonaecom have been using Network Engineer since 2001. So, is this a new project? An further license deal?

I don’t know. I suspect Telcordia are just trying to find something to PR in the quiet summer months. Thanks for including a few snippets of detail at least.

Amdocs OSS Win at Telenor Sweden

Amdocs have sold some OSS stuff to Telenor Sweden to manage inventory and automation of their wire-line network.

It is worth noting, as the PR does, that Amdocs products are already deployed to manage Telenor Sweden’s mobile network. This new deal presumably adds wire-line network, but it is not clear whether the new project includes 2G, 3G, IP, TDM backhaul for mobile, or some other network. Or all of the above.

Read ‘more’ (but no more actual detail) in the Amdocs PR.

How Web 2.0 is the OSS Industry?

What your peers are doing on the web…

I’ve been blogging for just ten months. Facebooking for a couple of years. Twittering, well, I’m still working out why.

I am not the lone late-adopter in this industry. Most people in the OSS industry are late adopters of commercial or professional ‘social’ networking.

For example, if you’re one of the six OSS professional who Twitter, check out the #BSSOSS hash tag. There’s stuff there, but its no cacophony of tweets.

above. Tweet!

It is starting to pick up though.

Start-ups and small consultancies are using blogs, in particular, to drive traffic and openly discuss the issues they help solve.

Large OSS/BSS organizations are starting to use blogs, where once webcasts would have been used, to create ‘thought leadership’, and to jack up their PR.

Thinking about being more socially-networked for business purposes? Consider some of these approaches…

Big Business Blogs

Adan Pope, Telcordia chief strategy officer, has become a guest blogger on the magazine-style B/OSS Insider blog. Check out Adan’s first blog here. He eases himself in to this new role with a bit of gentle positivity. I expect plenty of thought leadership and slightly controversial opinions in the future though.

I also here that Amdocs is setting up an ‘elite’ blog site, bringing together their most brilliant minds. Haven’t seen it yet, but when it’s out there I’m sure I’ll comment.

Amdocs have a few other outlets like marketing blogs, podcasts and micro-sites. They are one of the few big OSS companies actively Twittering, which is great, because their tweets actually add value by being a single source for update alerts across all their news streams.

Start-Up Blogs

Celona. Doing 21st Century start-up right! Great website, useful content, and a blog that’s as good a source of data migration thinking as any out there.

Celona also make good use of guest-blogging to promote their messages, and drive traffic to related articles. Check out Tony Sceales, Celona CTO, posting about your favorite blog, OSS Line, on the TMF data migration blog.

RiverMuse are, if you can’t guess from the name, a network fault/alarm/event management start-up. So early stage are they, that they don’t really have much of a website. Instead, they generate interest through occasional updates and debate on their simple blog. Worth a look, especially over the next few weeks I believe…

Consultant and Enthusiast Blogs

This is where OSS Line lives. I use it to stay in touch with the industry, build network, generate traffic to my consultancy propositions, build an online professional brand, e.t.c.

MicroSperience, the blog of the TeleSperience guys, is a favorite of mine. It has regular updates and probably the most interesting articles of all my OSS related RSS streams. TeleSperience are Teresa Cottam and Darran Clemants, independent analysts. They draw attention with articles and useful tools, like the recently added Twitter directories, and in doing so build a philosophy, methodology and brand.

Telco 2.0, consultancy (as STL) branded as a new paradigm in telco business models. They have a though leadership blog which doesn’t just output PR, unlike larger organization blogs typically do. Indeed, the Telco 2.0 blog is a good source of news on business, regulation, transformation and plain old cool stuff. None the less, its primary purpose is in supporting and proving the concepts of the Telco 2.0 business model, and it does this well.

Start Getting Social

It’s easy to start blogging, tweeting and Facebooking.

It’s not easy to get it right and show a return on your invested time.

Learn from the examples above, and if you think it might help your business, dip your toe in. Guest blogging is an excellent first step. Many blogs welcome guest writers (OSS Line included) who can offer something other than their company PR.

Running a blog or Twitter account is a significant investment of your time. Consider who will contribute, how often posts are expected, what topics are valid, how reader comments will be moderated, e.t.c. Get it right from the outset or, like any poorly conceived web site, your audience will look once and never return.

Next, invest more time in the rest of the industry’s social networks. Commenting, referencing, and responding are essential to build up connections, SEO and site traffic.

And finally, loosen up. Your social network should not be constrained by your official corporate writing style. Show your personality. Let the readers in to your business culture. Create some sort of a connection between individuals.

Need advice and support in defining and setting up your company's OSS/BSS social networking strategy? Drop me a line!

Off Topic - Holodeck, Today

Check out this craziness…

http://www.baekdal.com/future/interaction-design/sketchup-2045-today/

Has to be the best thing in VR since those massive stereo helmets that promised so much in the mid-90s.

The Eon Reality 3D cube looks like a total mind-mess. Where can I try one?

Beautiful Graphs = Fascinating Data

Last week I was with an friend and ex-colleague, attending his leaving drinks, discussing what we both learnt while working for a large BSS/OSS company, compared to the start-up we had originally joined. One of my ‘learnings’ (urgh) was the significance of how data is presented differently to professional managers rather than start-up propeller-heads.

Propeller-heads crave detail, and have sufficient domain knowledge to interpret the data quickly.

When presenting well researched and validated data to busy execs you should not stick it in a table or spreadsheet. Execs have no time to interpret it. And even if they did, proposals are accepted more on the exec’s emotion and gut instinct than a careful review of your work. So, you have to display the data, show its trends, the  message, in a nice picture, graph or map.

Long ago, I realized this was true for presenting technical concepts outside of my organization, to customers and partners. Even though they are in the same industry as me, their reference points are subtly different, and I am also constrained by the duration of your meeting. That’s why I’m pretty handy with Visio and PowerPoint…

But not as handy as this guy:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8070000/8070108.stm

In this video Professor Hans Rosling takes some pretty mundane data (GDP, life expectancy, per country) and does a stunning job of illustrating it. I let out a ‘wow’ or ‘blimey’ a number of times.

How does he do it?

• He keeps it simple. We already understand GDP and life expectancy. We don’t have to learn any fundamentals before he makes his point.
• He visualizes change. Seeing the change is must more effective than being shown two figures or a static line on the graph.
• He has an outrageous European accent, which always sounds intelligent and compelling.