July Letter from the Editor
By: Tim Young
“The only thing worse than being blind
is having sight and no vision.”
- Helen Keller
is having sight and no vision.”
- Helen Keller
As human beings, we see lots of things every day. Light enters our eyes, setting off an array of reactions within our nervous systems and, by extension, the rest of our bodies. We see millions of
objects and landscapes and faces every day, but we truly absorb very few. Examination is the key. What is the point of seeing the world if you do nothing to analyze what you’ve seen and what it
all means?
Very often, service providers are in a similar boat. They “see” data constantly, with massive amounts of access to usage and behavior data across their entire networks. However,
without any further analysis, that glut of data is just a tangle of bits and bytes. It isn’t useful until it stops being data and becomes information. For that to happen, service
providers must leverage tools that monitor the network closely and focus on the details and make meaningful use of what they find.
In this issue of Pipeline, we examine the latest in data collection and monitoring. We tackle the ins and outs of “Big Data” as it continues to be on
the mind of everyone in the space. We check out data mediation concerns, policy control, and bandwidth management. We hear from experts at firms like CSG International on how the
masses of data collected from the network can be properly analyzed to enhance business opportunities and drive customer satisfaction. In addition, we look at the other side of data
monitoring in the form of lawful intercept and other forms of clandestine data monitoring.
In addition, we continue to bring you the latest in news and opinion in the ComIT space.
Enjoy.
Tim Young, Editor-in-Chief
