The Passionate About OSS Podcast

AI is probably the buzziest buzzword we've ever experienced. It almost makes us cringe to talk about it. But, it's also the biggest game-changing tech in our careers and the reason why PAOSS has recently partnered with today's guest to offer services to network operators that wish to infuse their OSS/BSS with AI technologies. Our guest, Simon Wilson has spent a career at the cutting-ed...

Digital transformation is a term that's entered the modern vernacular, but here in the world of OSS/BSS it's just what we've been doing for decades. Whether aimed at delivering digital services, collecting data from all points of an organisation's compass, increasing the internal efficiencies of operational teams or improving user experiences externally, this is just what our OSS/BSS tools and pro...

OSS/BSS stacks can be incredibly complex and cumbersome beasts, especially in large carriers with many different product, process and network variants. We don't make that task any easier by creating many unique product offerings to take to market. And this time to market can be a significant competitive advantage, or be a serious impediment to it. NaaS, or Network as a Service, is a novel approach...

Our OSS and BSS are highly complex by nature. However, we seem to do a great hob of making them more complex, more challenging, less repeatable and hence, more difficult to change. Perhaps that caters to our deeper desires - so many of us in this industry love to prove our worth by solving complex problems Our guest on this episode, George Glass , has spent a career looking for ways to remove comp...

If the network is ultimately the product for any network operator, then OSS/BSS are the great connectors, connecting customers to that product. Both for initial activation, but also ongoing utilisation of network resources. Whilst everyone has a different perspective on the relevance / importance of OSS/BSS, there tend to be even broader divergences of opinion across networks, operations and execu...

When it comes to OSS/BSS implementations (and products), Time to Market (TTM) is one of our most important metrics. Not just for the network operator to deliver new offerings to market, but also in getting solutions up and running quickly. Faster TTM provides the benefits of cost reduction and faster turn-on of revenue, but potentially allows the operator beat competitors to the acquisition of new...

There are three distinct categories of organisations that interact with OSS/BSS - those who create them, those who use them and those who implement them. But no matter how good the first two are (ie the products / creators and the users), if the implementation isn't done well, then the OSS/BSS is almost pre-destined to fail. There are many, many challenges and pitfalls that await implementation te...

Have you noticed the rise in trust, but also the rise in sophistication in Open Source OSS/BSS in recent years? There are many open-source OSS/BSS tools out there. Some have been built as side-projects by communities that have day jobs, whilst others have many employed developers / contributors. Generally speaking, the latter are able to employ developers because they have a reliable revenue strea...

While it's the tier-1 telco OSS/BSS that get all the attention, it's actually the mid-market that makes up the largest number of OSS/BSS by customer count (in most deregulated telco markets). The mid-market consists of Tier 2/3 telcos and ISPs with subscriber counts measured in the thousands rather than hundreds of thousands or millions. However, the OSS/BSS of this mid-market still has to cover t...

There are just so many vendors in the OSS/BSS market (our vendor directory has over 400 listings - https://passionateaboutoss.com/directory) that it can be incredibly challenging to differentiate one product or vendor from the next. OSS/BSS customers may only know of a handful of possible solutions, but there are plenty of others out there. Cutting through the product / brand awareness challenge t...

You've possibly been inside a NOC (Network Operations Centre) and seen the video wall covered with network maps, activity / alarm / event lists and network health graphs. These OSS tools are the ultimate insurance policy for any organisation that runs a network. They help coordinate the activities to repair a network when the inevitable network outages and degradations happen. Our guest in this ep...

Much of the focus within OSS/BSS centres around the big-budget projects being done by the Tier-1 telcos. They get attention because there are lots of people involved, lots of OSS horsepower, with big, ambitious goals. But there's another part of the industry that doesn't tend to get so much public recognition - the mid-market telcos and utilities. These OSS/BSS tend to cover just as much scope. Th...

While it might sometimes feel like OSS mega projects just happen, there's usually a lot that must first play out up-stream, long before us technologists get the chance to design and build. First someone must spawn the idea, then be able to persuade a bunch of other people, exciting them with the possibilities of the idea. In many cases, this happens on the customer-side with OSS projects. The inte...

Jay Fenton is the Founder and CEO of Savvi (www.savvi.io), makers of innovative and highly performant OSS/BSS components that redefine the state of the art. Savvi's portfolio notably includes SNMP, Streaming Telemetry, Netflow and IoT collectors each of which operate in the 10s of millions of events per second on a single server, solving collection problems for massive networks. We also mention Lu...

Francis Haysom is a Principal Analyst for Appledore Research Group , a global research and consulting firm specialising in the telecommunication and software markets with a particular focus on OSS/BSS. In this episode, Francis takes us on a ride through his career leading OSS/BSS innovation across the last three decades with iconic companies such as Convergys, Cramer, Amdocs, Telcordia and Ericsso...

Vance Shipley is the CEO and Founder of SigScale . SigScale is a provider of standardised, open-source, cloud-native OSS/BSS tools, including flagship product, OCS (Online Charging System). In this episode, Vance takes us on a fascinating journey through a career that started three decades ago with his first role as a high-tech lumberjack through to his current owner / developer role with SigScale...

James Crawshaw is a Principal Analyst with Omdia , one of the world's top-three technology analysis agencies. James specialises in analysis of OSS, telecommunications and IT industries, which means he spends more time researching OSS technologies and firms than almost anyone on the planet. In this episode, James provides insights into what's currently trending in OSS, but he also describes the tec...

Michael Jones is a Practice Principal at Analytica Resources , a recruitment role that sees him connecting employers and employees. Analytica is a niche agency that specialises in BSS and OSS placements. This provides Michael with an insider's perspective on the successful techniques that applicants use to find their first, or next, job in the OSS / BSS industry. Michael describes the processes th...

Peter Dart describes his journey working with some of the world's earliest geospatial software to his current role as Chief Architect with Synchronoss . In this role, he helps to guide the roadmap of Synchronoss' Spatial Suite, a set of tools that assist leading network operators to manage and maintain their Physical Network Inventory (PNI). In a world where network virtualisation technologies are...

Tony Kalcina recounts the story of taking Clarity International from its founding team and customer to IPO (Initial Public Offering) and beyond. He also describes an extensive career starting with Telstra OTC through to his current role as the APAC CTO for Tech Mahindra and Ambassador for TM Forum. Tony provides insights into the formation and leadership of OSS teams and the opportunities that sti...

Welcome to the Passionate About OSS podcast, the show for people who are just that – Passionate About OSS – Where the OSS stands for Operational Support Systems.  In other words, the software solutions that help manage and operate the complex telecommunications networks of today.  Thanks for joining me on the episode that isn’t quite an episode – it’s more of an introduction message that...