Advertising and marketing

Further opportunities exist in the realms of advertising and marketing. AT&T and Sprint launched data-driven marketing programs in 2012to capitalize on potential ad revenue, an indication that brand marketers outside of telecom have climbed on board the Big Data boat and understand the value that lies ahead in the uncharted waters of mobile and Big Data.

“The opportunity with mobile is to deliver offers in the right context to the right person at the right time,” wrote Glenn Pingul, vice president of products and mobile strategies at Globys, on the company’s website last fall. “Yes, mobile is another marketing channel, but one with unique opportunity: proactive customer engagement, a highly personalized experience, contextual relevance, and anytime/anywhere access.”

Globys has experienced significant success with its solution in the CSP space. “There is a huge opportunity for operators to unleash the value of their customer data assets both for themselves and third parties,” Pingul added. “We’ve been working with a number of mobile operators who are adopting a more scientific approach to marketing to their customers.”

Service providers with the deepest pockets have moved into the data-center market, supplying both physical space and solutions and capitalizing on the explosion in cloud services. Deutsche Telekom’s investment in data solutions is a good example of the high level of commitment from top-tier CSPs: the company announced last October that it had begun construction on its 90th data center, which, at the size of 30 soccer fields, would be the largest in Germany. Verizon, meanwhile, can boast of more than 200 data centers worldwide, and for other service providers, offering data-center services through a partner like Equinix is a possibility.

There will be increasing traction in the data-center market and the add-on services that can be offered by data-center operators. In its list of the “top 10 strategic technology trends for 2013,” Gartner predicted that organizations will abandon single-system data warehousing and move toward multiple systems, “including content management, data warehouses, data marts and specialized file systems tied together with data services and metadata.”

Hanging ten

Lara Albert, Globys’s VP of global marketing, separated the excitement surrounding Big Data from the actionable intelligence in an August 2012 blog post: “Gathering and consolidation is a start but the real hype is in unleashing the power of the data to understand and engage with customers to drive profitable actions, e.g., mobile purchase, customer loyalty, increased usage.” One thing is certain: CSPs are facing a tsunami of data, and if they can tame it they stand to gain a great deal.

CSPs that embrace Big Data solutions will have a significant competitive advantage in the years to come. These solutions lower costs, improve efficiencies, boost average revenue per user (ARPU), and open new revenue streams while guiding business strategy in the right direction. Even though Big Data was tagged by Gartner as one of the most hyped trends of 2012, there’s more than just foam to this wave, and for CSPs in a competitive sea it’s a wave you won’t want to miss.