In the UK Emirates Airlines are using the tag line “When was the last time you did something for the first time”, on their TV adverts at the moment.

It’s a good question, a good tag line and a something we all ought to think about.

When was the last time you were challenged to do something out of your normal day to day workload? [1] When was the last time YOU thought, “Is this right? Can we do it differently? Can we do it better?”

One of the trends I’ve noticed over the last few years is the tendency for the industry as a whole to say, “This is the way to do it.” Unfortunately dogma rears its ugly head and the cries of heresy can drum innovation down.

I like to think I know my way round forecasting, I know the myth that is a marketing forecasts, I know Erlang (well not personally as he’s dead), I know my teams, I know that for us WFM is not applicable, I know our forcasts are good. What I don’t know is if we are doing it the right way rather thanjust the standard way.

There is a lot of work being done by people who are a lot cleverer than me at MIT and the University of Huazhong that I think will revolutionise the way we forecast in the next 10 years.

Hands up who has heard of FPP or Fractal Point Processes? I’m about to use lots of buzzwords now, Fractal, Chaos, Self-Similar, Stochastic, Poisson, Superposition, Queuing theory, FMPPP (Fractal-Modulated Poisson Point Process), FBNDP (Fractal-Binomial Noise Driven Process) and traffic engineering. Whoever is playing office bingo may shout house now.

Ok, buzz words out of the way. Nothing is new in the basic structure of how a queue works. The research at the moment is looking at the huge amounts of traffic across international switches and doesn’t apply; yet, to the smaller volumes we get in our centres however it is something to be watched. The theory is that unlike a traditional Erlang model, which applies a steady state transformation to the data, a much more robust fractal model can be applies CONSTANTLY remodelling, intraday becomes automatic, and ‘smarter’. [4]

Now I know and can understand the math behind the Erlang calcs. I’m even working on a way to break it down to ‘Math for Managers’. [5] I know Mandelbrot, Julia and Lorentz’s work, hell I even understand about 40% of it, but now we all need to start looking to the next new thing. In our case it WILL be VOIP, we don’t have any chance, copper to glass, analogue to digital. We WILL be going there. The infrastructure is already in place in what is the biggest network in the world, why will telecoms companies continue to install and upgrade voice networks when they can bang the call across the spare bandwidth they already have on their shiney new data network. The first stages will be transparent with the voice end still being a standard phone but the transmission over IP. Moving later to IP Phones and IP only call centres. This isn’t a warning more of a heads up that these things are changing.

Which leads me back to the point above.

In a VOIP environment an Erlang forecast won’t work, callflow across a network is chaotic, network loading needs to be balanced to allow agents to take audible clear calls not just calls. Traffic engineering will be the new callflow planning, FMPPP and FBNDP will replace Erlang B and C as the accepted methods for forecasting. Staff planning will move from agent Vs call planning to Bandwidth Vs Agent planning.

We are fortunate at this point to be in at the start of something new and possibly the biggest revolution in communications since the rotary switch, the drawback is for all of us it’s back to school.

The two articles below give an insight and the third I can’t find a weblink to at the moment.

1) Fractal Point Process and Queuing Theory and Application to Communication Networks

Gregory Wornell MIT

2) A Case For Fractal Traffic Modelling

Ashok Erramilli, Walter Willinger MIT

3) Performance Analysis of a queue under FPP Self-Similar Traffic

Chen Chun Han, Cao Mingcui, Liu Erwu, Li Feng and Luo Zhixiang.
Huazhong University

And as an introduction to fractal modelling.

A leap of faith with Fractal Analysis by John Conover

Have fun, time to hit the books

DaveA

[1] For me it was Sunday. I’ve been asked for permission to publish an article I wrote.
No problem as far as I’m concerned however can I supply a short bio? Now looking at this it looks easy. Just come up with 2 short paragraphs about myself, some contact details and Bob’s your mums brother. In true panto fashion. “Oh no it isn’t”. I had THE greatest attack of writers block I’ve ever had in my life. The first 3 attempts ended up sounding more boring than a Party Political Broadcast on behalf of The Grey Party.

Do I not have a life? Have I not done many varied and fun things? Did I not get slung out of a Greek nightclub for an incident with a goat, a plate of olives, the barmaid and a bottle of Tequila. [2][3]

So it shouldn’t be that hard should it? Ha. So my thanks to Iain Hardy for acting as editor on that one.

[2] One of these is a lie

[3] Best guesses on a postcard to…

[4] Trust me I’m going somewhere with this

[5] Watch this space, but don’t hold your breath.