The Passionate About OSS Podcast

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 episode, David Nestic, deeply understands the importance of these network assurance tools as well as the people and processes that they are designed for. David is the Digital and Technology Strategy Manager at nbn, Australia's wholesale backbone supplier. David has the enviable task of making these solutions more effective, consistent and predictable for the operations teams that use them. Not just in the here and now, but also looking well into the future, using innovative approaches to turn network operations centres into next-generation situational awareness platforms.

David provides insights into the opportunities that are presenting for increased automation and predictive assessment, allowing operations teams to spend less time evaluating and more time resolving the big issues as they arise. He also describes the ways in which long-held approaches such as ITSM frameworks will need to be overhauled to keep pace with these disruptive technologies. He also draws upon parallels from his career journey across Applied Physics and Aviation into the network operations practices of the future.

For any further questions you may have, David can be found at https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-nestic-3926a527/

Disclaimer. All the views and opinions shared in this podcast, and others in the series, are solely those of our guest and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the organisations discussed.

PS. Apologies for the intermittent sound quality problems on this episode

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 episode, David Nestic, deeply understands the importance of these network assurance tools as well as the people and processes that are designed for them. David is the Digital and Technology Strategy Manager at nbn, Australia's wholesale backbone supplier. David has the enviable task of making these solutions more effective, consistent and predictable for the operations teams that use them. Not just in the here and now, but also looking well into the future, using innovative approaches to turn network operations centres into next-generation situational awareness platforms.

David provides insights into the opportunities that are presenting for increased automation and predictive assessment, allowing operations teams to spend less time evaluating and more time resolving the big issues as they arise. He also describes the ways in which long-held approaches such as ITSM frameworks will need to be overhauled to keep pace with these disruptive technologies. He also draws upon parallels from his career journey across Applied Physics and Aviation into the network operations practices of the future.

For any further questions you may have, David can be found at https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-nestic-3926a527/

Disclaimer. All the views and opinions shared in this podcast, and others in the series, are solely those of our guest and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the organisations discussed.

PS. Apologies for the intermittent sound quality problems on this episode

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. They just don't have the same level of resources.

Our guest on this episode, Steven Cocchiarella, knows the challenges of providing a full-stack OSS/BSS for the mid-tier market. He was Director of Information Services and Business Analytics for Smithville (http://www.smithville.com), an independent telco provider in Indiana, USA. He describes the challenges he faced in this role and some of the techniques he used to circumvent some of them. These techniques include the "cut it off and kill it," approach and people + process driven digital transformation (rather than technology-driven transformation).

Steven also outlines the opportunities awaiting the many OSS/BSS vendors supplying mid-market telcos like Smithville. He describes the gaps in current offerings and how they can be done better to provide better outcomes for the mid-market. He also provides examples of how he used Salesforce to provide a wrapper around the monolithic OSS/BSS he inherited, allowing him to have freer control over processes and essential data sets. Steven enjoyed these projects so much that he's now moved on to become a Salesforce Consultant at Growth Heroes (https://growthheroes.com).

For any further questions you may have, Steven can be found at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-cocchiarella-3756b811b/

Disclaimer. All the views and opinions shared in this podcast, and others in the series, are solely those of our guest and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the organisations discussed.

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 internal team sees the need and collects the support (and sponsors) to bring an OSS project (and product?) to inception. The customer-side team then typically asks OSS vendors / integrators to compete for the project implementation [The Red Ocean for OSS vendors].

However, our guest in this episode, Ashley Neale, takes us into his world where he's constantly seeking ways to do things differently, to do things better for the customer [The Blue Ocean]. Ashley talks us through his experiences of conceptualising, pitching. persuading and closing a mega project worth well over $100m. Even better than that, he then describes the challenges, pitfalls and scars that he overcame whilst leading the delivery of that project, building an OSS/BSS almost from scratch.

Ashley then takes us on his career journey from an IT course at uni, to helping Engineers to sell, through to his current role developing strategic markets for Vocus. He also shares his big-picture perspective on what we can do better and where the big opportunities still lie in the OSS industry.

For any further questions you may have, Ashley can be found at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleyneale/

Disclaimer. All the views and opinions shared in this podcast, and others in the series, are solely those of our guest and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the organisations discussed.

Ashley promised to provide references to further reading in this podcast. Here it is in all its glory. Some brilliant titles amongst them:

Sales

The Challenger Sale – Mathew Dixon

Pitch Anything – Oren Klaff

Psychology of Selling – Brian Tracy

SPIN Selling – Neil Rackham

Lead Generation for the Complex Sale – Brian Carroll

Cracking the Sales Management Code – Jason Jordan & Michelle Vazzana

Understanding Business

Good to Great – Jim Collins

Great by Choice – Jim Collins

Built to Last – Jim Collins

The Hard Thing About Hard Things – Ben Horowitz

How to Design a Great Customer Experience – Fred Wiersema

What’s your customer’s problem? – Fred Wiersema

Lean Startup – Eric Ries

Understanding People

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance – Angela Duckworth

Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell

Blink – Malcolm Gladwell

Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell

David and Goliath – Malcolm Gladwell

Think Like a Freak - Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner

Superfreakonomics – Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind – Yuval Noah Harai

Extreme Ownership – Jocko Willink & Leif Babin

12 Rules for Life – Jordan Peterson

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 Luna - a unique visualisation platform for situational awareness, customer experience management and AI/ML overwatch. Luna fluidly combines multi-layer spatial, logical and time-series data, at massive scale.

Jay is a serial entrepreneur and has built a number of products from the ground up. When we say the ground up, we mean it, as he's re-written low-level data handling libraries to be able to process data volumes far larger than previous industry standards. As well as developing OSS tools, Jay is also currently working on side projects in Virtual Reality and Social Audio.

This is a much longer show than normal but we pack a lot into this episode. Jay delves into a history of phone phreaking as a teenager and his early days of administering carrier voice & IP networks all the way through to the many product opportunities that he sees today. We cover a range of ideas, old and new, including: cloud OSS, telcos as meta companies, the disruption of satellite internet, the potential for an entire OSS on Salesforce, the complexities of network virtualisation, ONAP, microservices, open-source, 5G plus mobile-edge compute (MEC), Rube Goldberg machines, open source in telco, risk/reward and the recent changes in the Elastic license model, and finally mixed reality (AR / VR / XR).

Disclaimer. All the views and opinions shared in this podcast, and others in the series, are solely those of our guest and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the organisations discussed.

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 Ericsson. He then takes us into his current research at Appledore, looking over the horizon into what comes next in the OSS/BSS world. You could say his forecast is a little "cloud-y" and "edge-y," so strap yourself in for a story that provides a fantastic view of the history of our industry, as well as some brilliant observations and insights into where it will go next.

For any further questions you may have for our guest, Francis can be found at https://www.linkedin.com/in/francis-haysom/

Disclaimer. All the views and opinions shared in this podcast, and others in the series, are solely those of our guest and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the organisations discussed.

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. His journey follows an entrepreneurial pathway, developing clever solutions to the many problems that arose during the early days of deregulation of the telco industry. He also outlines the types of opportunities that are presenting themselves in the modern landscape of 5G and network virtualisation.

Vance also highlights how he has become a Venn diagram, with a unique intersection of skills that include developing solutions that incorporate low-level protocol stacks, specialising in cellular networks (and beyond) and being a key connector to bring network management standards together across 3GPP, TM Forum and LFN.

For any further questions you may have for our guest, Vance can be found at https://www.linkedin.com/in/vances/

Disclaimer. All the views and opinions shared in this podcast, and others in the series, are solely those of our guest and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the organisations discussed.

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 techniques he uses to peer over the horizon to spot nascent developments.

For any further questions you may have for our guest, James can be found at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamescrawshaw/

Disclaimer. All the views and opinions shared in this podcast, and others in the series, are solely those of our guest and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the organisations discussed.

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 that he uses to identify best-fit candidates as well as the techniques he recommends for differentiating yourself from others.  He also provides tips on how employers can win in the war on talent, finding ideal candidates, some of which might not even be actively seeking roles.

For any further questions you may have for our guest, Michael can be found at https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeljones1983/

Disclaimer. All the views and opinions shared in this podcast, and others in the series, are solely those of our guest and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the organisations discussed.

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 grabbing the attention of many, Peter articulates why, perhaps more than ever, PNI tools remain relevant. He describes the many use cases where network designers, field workers and capacity planners interact with PNI tools / data, but also delves into some of the less well known opportunities to leverage this information.

For any further questions you may have for our guest, Peter can be found at https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-dart-72275611/

Disclaimer. All the views and opinions shared in this podcast, and others in the series, are solely those of our guest and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the organisations discussed.