Recent Entries

• You might not stop the hackers, but you can contain them

  by Rui Paiva April 13, 2016
  Communications service providers (CSPs) have, over many years, become besotted by different forms of assurance. I’m not talking about insurance here; it’s more about making sure things work properly they way they were designed to and the way customers expect them to work. Depending on...

• Time to join the dots in fighting fraud

  by Rui Paiva February 19, 2016
  Recent headlines and cybersecurity reports have shown how the risks are increasing. Fraudsters hack systems to extract personal data so they can bombard customers with phishing scams, or they implant malware into apps so they can access and control smartphones. We now carry networked computers wh...

• In the IoT stampede who will get trampled?

  by Rui Paiva December 10, 2015
  Depending on which analyst report or expert opinion you listen to, the number of Things that will be connected to the Internet in the next five years will be anywhere from 1 billion to 100 billion. So let’s just assume there will be lots of them.   The second big area of conjecture is h...

• Fighting fraud like fighting forest fires

  by Rui Paiva November 2, 2015
  I recently had the great pleasure of meeting senior fraud management experts from the major US network operators at the WeDo Conference held in Washington, DC, but what they had to say about fraudulent activities on networks around the world was most concerning.   They were all active in the ...

• From sailing ships & port wine to spaceships & things online

  by Rui Paiva October 1, 2015
  As a persistent promoter of Portugal I had great joy in reading that my beloved country, rich with a history of discovery, had discovered a new spirit of entrepreneurial adventure.   A recent report in Forbes magazine simply confirmed what we in Portugal have known for years.   “...

• Data doesn’t need to be big to be effective

  by Rui Paiva April 30, 2015
  As businesses become leaner, usually from the inevitable result of cost-cutting and transformation projects, they will need to change the way they operate and manage costs going forward.   Reducing head count may give quick results to the bottom line and shareholder confidence but it rarely a...

• Telcos are leading the way in EBA – but for how long?

  by Rui Paiva March 20, 2015
  A funny thing happened when telcos started taking revenue assurance seriously. They discovered that they were operating their businesses in the dark when it came to cost management, margins and even profitability – not to mention raw leakage.   Those old PowerPoint slides of the leaking...

• CEOs seeing red

  by Rui Paiva January 9, 2015
  CEOs have been getting a lot of press recently. It’s not surprising really as they are the ones ultimately responsible for a company’s performance and are accountable to both stakeholders and staff alike.   Forbes launched the opening salvo against wanton CEOs by saying, “ac...

• Praying may not be the best security option!

  by Rui Paiva October 31, 2014
  It is very easy to become complacent in business. When things are going well and customers and sales keep rolling through the door, why worry?   That might have worked in years gone by but things change so radically in business these days you can hardly take your eye off the ball before somet...
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• Why three is a crowd

  by Rui Paiva September 19, 2014
  When big communications and utility companies go after customers they most commonly takes a three-pronged attack hitting corporate accounts, small to medium enterprises (SMEs) and consumers.   It would be foolish to generalize but, for the purposes of this blog, I need to.   The big ...

• Assuring Assurance

  by Rui Paiva May 1, 2014
  I read with interest a blog written by industry pundit (and MC at our next Worldwide User Group meeting in May), Tony Poulos, where he felt that the telecoms industry and service providers in general, were ill prepared for the inevitable onslaught of risk that digital services would bring. He was t...

• Loyalty breeds disruption

  by Rui Paiva March 24, 2014
  It is said that once you get used to something it is quite difficult to change … and when it comes to computing and mobile phones the theory definitely holds water. For those that started with early personal computers WordStar was the choice for word processing and VisiCalc for spreadsheets....

• Does the 'small stuff' matter?

  by Rui Paiva January 22, 2014
  Anyone watching the 'evolution' of the world's major social networks must be wondering what else they can come up with to keep their users "Always On"!Facebook, since going public, seems particularly obsessed with anything and everything that it thinks may 'enhance' the user experience. It started l...

• Is risk clouding judgement?

  by Rui Paiva November 18, 2013
  With so much talk of cloud and everything-as-a-service these days it’s not surprising that many IT/IS managers are throwing their hands up in despair.   Should I or shouldn’t I ? How do I go about it ? What are the risks ? Who should I partner with ? Is my job on the line ? &...

• Why is Big Data so Big?

  by Rui Paiva September 25, 2013
  What ever happened to simple Data Analytics and Business Intelligence?   Today it’s all about Big Data, but what is all the fuss really about?   The key lies in Wikipedia’s definition that “Big Data is the term for a collection of data sets so large and comp...