Changing my blog

Wednesday morning was the first time this autumn that the temperature outside went below freezing, winter just arrived. The sun is shining; it’s a beautiful day so I decided to cycle to work. After a few minutes on the bike I am almost regretting going by bike… the wind chill is far below freezing, my ears are frozen and my running shoes are stiff and icy…. The only consolation I get is the beautiful autumn colours exposed by the bright sunlight.

While having a brain freeze I decided to change my blog to make it a simple brain dump about my work. I will write something that transpired, that I thought or thinking, expose what I feel about what’s going on every week. This means there will be entries about managing a start-up, releasing products, arguments and imaginations.

This week was a very tough week my sleeping average went down from 4 hours to 3 hours. There’s a huge RFQ that I just completed, actually almost an impossible scope but doable and profitable given the right management approach and excellent strategy. I missed the LTE seminar in London yesterday (apologies to Abbey, CEO of AWTG).

Put out a public release of AWE to selected users, the platform is downloadable on the AmanziTel Wiki and is free. I also got to test which applications works and which doesn’t, so after first publishing the release 3 new versions have been made. Why are we giving away our software for free and what’s up with so many releases happening in a matter of weeks? Did I not learn from previous experiences in software development?

Is Open Source the ANSWER?

Having written my thoughts on what the issues are today concerning existing proprietary software and platforms, you might ask what the solutions in solving these issues are. Is open source technology the ANSWER?

NO, open source is not the only answer. Open source as defined by the Open Source Initiative and gives users freedom to do what they want on a piece of code but more importantly collaborate to improve the code so that in return more people are able to use it as a complete software. There of course multiple foundations and communities supporting open source such as the Eclipse Foundation , the Free Software Foundation , the Apache Software Foundation and a lot more. However in some cases these communities does not agree with each other regarding the definition of open source which is evident in the non-compatibility of their OSI approved open source licenses.

To truly address the issues concerning proprietary software, part of the ANSWER lies within the organisation who provides the platform or software. YES, you need open source licensing to deliver total freedom to users and it should also be fully supported with an enterprise level of support and not only form the user community. Just imagine how bad it is for a company acquiring a piece of software for free, implements it in their business and then later can't get support to address any problems or mistakes they might have created.

Furthermore as user requirements evolve, the platform should be very agile to be always in the forefront of technology advancement. In this sense part of the ANSWER is through collaboration between organisations and community contributions to ensure that evolution and revolution are captured and implemented as innovations during the platform's lifecycle.

What are the most common issues with existing software vendors

As a professional, an employee, a business owner we all have at some point in our work used software. For enterprise software we (or the IT department) in most cases have to purchase it from a software vendor. So in your experience what are the issues in purchasing enterprise software? I have listed my personal bad experience below:
* High CAPEX and very high TCO (total cost of ownership)
* Vendor lock-in
* Only around 10% of the features and functionalities are actually used
* Users can not integrate their data and way of working to the platform
* Lack of customisability resulting to unused software
* Lack of flexibility and scalability
* Software becomes outdated once requirement changes

Is the mobile telecom sector ready for open source?

I have often been asked "Is there a place for open source in the Mobile Telecoms industry". My ready made answer is always "YES".

Now let's take a closure look, in the consumer electronics market, open source software is widely used while in the handset market we now see open source operating systems being implemented in the latest "multi-media" handsets... think of Google's Android OS. So that easily answers the question, doesn't it?

How about the all important infrastructure side of mobile telecoms, the holy grail of most network operators and system vendors? The answer is again yes, however, today the usage of open source software in most of system vendor's equipment is not promoted. To find check the components of a network infrastructure and most likely you will find a hardware using an open source software. The use of open source software makes most of the software-dependent hardware to be sold at lower prices compared to when using a proprietary software.

The planning, management and optimisation parts of a mobile network are the areas where there is no open source presence or little penetration if any. Proprietary software makers dominate this sphere where software and applications are priced sky-high and in most cases more expensive than the hardware infrastructure needed to run them, justifiably so. The question then is why is that no open source solution exist? Actually you will be surprised that there are. For example the use of Linux OS and mySQL in several software application. What is missing is a complete solution or tool that is truly open source.

This is changing with the introduction of network management and due diligence applications that are truly open source. Further more decision support systems and analysis software covering planning, management and optimisation tasks that are truly open source are on its way to the market. A new era has begun, the age of free software :-)