Rarely is a chief technology officer such a proponent of business and operations support systems. But this CTO, Ibrahim Gedeon of Telus — the second largest service provider in Canada — has long been an evangelist for BSS and OSS. It is unclear when the spirit of the back office took hold, but it may have been when his company completed one of the most ambitious and industry-leading transitions to IP in the industry, only to be left asking the question made famous by Miss Peggy Lee: “Is that all there is?”
Being an evangelist, however, does not make Gedeon a software fan. He knows BSS and OSS solutions do not always live up to their hype. He knows that what passes for standards in this space can be long on idealism and short on realism. He knows that it’s a competitive marketplace where a vendor’s view of end-to-end begins and ends at different places than they do in his view. But Gedeon now is convinced of the equal importance of a proper back-office infrastructure, and with two simple words has re-enforced that point to the industry. Those two words? Tim McElligott tells us in a recent article for Billing & OSS World.
