You may have noticed a subtle change in the layout of the site. OSS Line gets a reboot…
This refresh is the result of a big change to the back-end of the site. Since 2009, OSS Line has been running on a blogging service called Type Pad, which has been great in so far as it’s been simple to set-up and maintain. But Type Pad can only be tweaked and configured via a relatively small set of design parameters. With aspirations to do new things with OSS Line I’ve now moved on to a self-hosted WordPress platform. WordPress is probably the most popular blogging and content-management platform today, so it comes with the benefits of far greater support for add-ons, design themes and configuration options.
So I’ve used all those new design options to update OSS Line to look more or less like it has always looked… for now. The benefits of WordPress will start to kick in when I roll out the new content over the next couple of months.
What’s coming? More of what makes OSS Line unique. When I check out the posts I’ve made in the last 4 years, the site’s most popular pages, and in-coming search terms, it’s clear that OSS Line is for people wanting to learn and make decisions. About their own products, their projects, their suppliers, and their career in the industry.
My intention for OSS Line is:
- To grow a knowledge base of OSS/BSS articles and guides, both general beginners’ introductions and more detailed dives in to specific systems/processes, with a strong focus on how OSS is changing for modern technology and changing economics.
- To provide industry experts, enthusiastic individuals and innovative companies, a new channel to present their own views, analysis and ideas, via guest blog posts, articles and aggregated social media feeds.
That second point is a new component of OSS Line, and I expect it to change as I better understand how you guys would like to publish content and interact with OSS Line’s followers. The intention is not to turn OSS Line in to another generic telco new feed, but instead I want to bring in new contributors able to offer their own expert view of the industry with original content that is of practical use.
If you’d like to get involved in this next phase for the site, register an interest with me via email.
This change to OSS Line comes at a time when people are asking: what is the future, or even the relevance, of OSS as networks become virtualised, services live in the cloud, and telco business models are forced to change? The next few years will see a change to the OSS industry as significant as in the 1990/2000s, with those systems that emerged 15-20 years ago to dominate the industry requiring either a radical reboot or otherwise accept the role of becoming the next ‘legacy’ systems. Interesting times to be an OSS blogger….