Solutions

“Most service providers are only using a small portion of the data they hold because of challenges such as data integration and management,” said Steve Cotton, TM Forum’s director of business assurance programs, in a recent press release for Amdocs’s Big Data Framework.

If CSPs hope to survive in the age of Big Data, they must retool their operations and improve their Big Data capabilities. CSPs aren’t yet the data scientists they must become in order to profit from the rapidly changing market.

“Transforming ingrained operating models and business processes is a difficult task for telcos, and many are not entirely sure what they are transforming towards,” said Clare McCarthy, practice leader for telco operations at Ovum, in a July news release. “Therefore, choosing a business intelligence and analytics solution and partner will be one of the most important strategic decisions that they face in the next year.”

In light of this reality, software companies and network equipment manufacturers are refining their products to deliver Big Data capabilities. Although there are turnkey solutions on the market, in some instances these capabilities can be found in the same systems that CSPs use to address other needs. For example, NetScout’s nGenius service-assurance platform can also be used for business intelligence and proactive CEM, and Gigamon has evolved its network-management products to address Big Data challenges for telcos.

Industry stalwarts such as IBM, Oracle and Amdocs are aggressively selling Big Data solutions to CSP customers. Amdocs’s aforementioned Big Data Framework enables service providers to transform their data into new revenue streams, while newer market entrants such as Teoco offer a full suite of real-time Big Data contextualization and insights, including customer, behavior, profitability, and quality of experience (QoE) analytics. Teoco also makes it possible for CSPs to monetize location-based data, or what it calls “INrange” analytics.

Examples in action

Some forward-thinking companies have already taken steps toward becoming Big Data businesses. Last fall Telefónica launched a new business unit, Dynamic Insights, that focuses on driving revenue with Big Data. Its first offering, Smart Steps, is aimed at selling crowd-density information to numerous parties.

Steve Alder, CEO of Dynamic Insights, explained how it works in Telefónica’s official announcement. “Smart Steps generates far richer insights than existing footfall measurement products. It shows not only the size of a crowd visiting an area but also anonymized trends on the age and gender composition of the crowd,” he said, adding, “It will help a range of organizations—including retailers, town councils, sporting arenas, and emergency responders—to make better-informed decisions and better understand and serve the needs of their customers.”

In July AT&T updated its privacy policy, giving it leeway to sell more data to third parties, including location data and subscribers’ web-browsing histories. In a tip of the hat toward transparency, the CSP explained in a blog post that “the new programs we are introducing will use aggregate and anonymous data to create marketing and analytics reports” and “allow us to deliver more relevant advertising to our customers.”

A Big Data future

Big Data is more than a catchphrase or a marketing buzzword; in many ways it represents the future for CSPs. Though it’s currently being used to improve companies’ internal processes, CEM and marketing, eventually Big Data could be externally monetized and become the very lifeblood of CSPs operating in the new digital economy. To prepare for this future, CSPs should be ready to evolve into data-centric organizations while cultivating partnerships with the OTTs and other third parties and closely considering the many Big Data solutions in the marketplace.