In February of this year, Mobileum added world-renowned computational data scientist Alex (Sandy) Pentland to its Board of Advisors. Voted by Forbes as one of the most powerful data scientists in the world, this move indicates the company’s continued commitment and keen focus on state-of-the-art analytics.  This also bolsters the prowess of the Mobileum team who are focused on its telco-specific analytics solution. Mobileum sees Pentland's addition to the team as part of their unique big data recipe; combining data science, with domain expertise, a superior product platform, and access to customer data to make their own secret sauce.

Breaking the Rules

Traditional, rules-based fraud and security solutions provide protection against known risks. But, Mobileum is taking a large, technological leap forward.  By applying state-of-the-art analytics using an AI platform, Mobileum’s solution detects outlier patterns and then automatically takes the appropriate action to address the risk. While this closed-loop approach works very well to address the immediate issues of fraud and security, it can also be extended to those other vertical solution areas as new or emerging use cases. This bodes very well for Mobileum.

Mobileum is quickly applying their advanced analytics capabilities into other areas as well. For example, Mobileum is making it easy for operators to capitalize on these new monetization opportunities by providing a cloud-based platform that allows operators to connect to an ecosystem of travel partners – such as flight and hotel booking services – with pre-assembled revenue-share agreements in place.  Once an operator adopts the service, the network data is analyzed and scores of customers can be targeted and monetized based on predictive patterns and behavioral analytics. Mobileum's first of three deployments is scheduled to be launched later this year, and it stands to change the data monetization game by incorporating plug-and-play revenue sharing, value-added travel services and other operator benefits to customers relative to their specific needs, usage, and behavior.

Mobileum’s Momentum

Mobileum’s momentum attracted the attention of Audax Private Equity, who acquired Mobileum last year. Audax is known to partner with companies to help accelerate growth and capitalize on marketing opportunities. According to the press announcement, Boston-based Audax “partners with management teams to transform established market leading companies into larger, better-positioned and more valuable enterprises,” which seems to be ringing true. In the same press release, it states, “The entire leadership and management team will remain with the organization through this change of ownership and will continue to invest in high quality associates through future acquisitions and new hires.” The acquisition is fueling Mobileum’s momentum as Audax continues to invest in both the company’s growth and talent. In January, Mobileum has appointed former Vodafone Global CEO, Aurn Sarin to its Board of Directors.

The continued investment and commitment to growth by Audax adds significant fuel to the Mobileum fire.  With new technology, additional product use cases in pre-deployment, and world-class leadership it appears Mobileum is well-poised for growth in an industry where too often stagnant growth is seen as success. It will be interesting to see the impact this has on Mobileum and, perhaps more interesting, to see the impact it has on the industry.

It’s not often you see a company with such a long history revitalize itself with new technology.  It’s even more rare to see a company apply such innovative, advanced technology that could change the way the industry operates.  It’s probably equally as rare to see a company do this while keeping its core mission intact, in this case that is preserving and protecting operators’ business while helping them capitalize on new revenue opportunities.  In fact, in over a decade of writing in this space, I can only think of one company who is doing all the above, and that company is Mobileum.