VanillaPlus: With the tremendous amount of focus on analytics today across all industries, are communications service providers (CSPs) behind relative to IT providers and enterprises with regards to big data and analytics?
Ray Bariso: Actually, the truth is that CSPs and their suppliers have been utilising big data since the industry’s inception. Certainly the definition of big has changed dramatically, but CSPs have always used a tremendous amount of data to manage their assets, secure their networks, meet SLA requirements, and perform other functions. Telecoms has used big data and analytics long before it was trendy – it was simply what was needed to provide network services. The big difference now is that CSPs can drive innovation and more value for their customers faster than ever before.
VP: Why do you think that is?
RB: It’s because CSPs can become well positioned to monetise all that data traversing their networks. Big data has become much bigger. The communications industry has always led in terms of the volume of data that had to be managed, and that will continue. Instead of communications networks managing and generating gigabytes and terabytes, they’re now required to manage and handle petabytes, exabytes and zettabytes. Given the innovation that is happening in the Networked Society, I wouldn’t expect it to stop there either. So – the stepfunction increase in volume is a significant change and must be addressed by more capable tools and processes.
Other key differences are the format and sources of the data traversing communications networks. Data is no longer solely structured in rows and columns inside a relational database and stored in a data warehouse, but rather also comes in as unstructured data generated from social media and other interactive sources. The sources are also very different now – it’s on the move. We’re in a highly connected – mobile – society, and all of these mobile devices that we have are generating tons of rich data that can tell us so much more about how to better serve the end user and better utilise our networks. This rich data is in motion – and that adds much more complexity to capturing, storing and understanding that data.
VP: You mentioned that more capable tools and processes will be needed to address these changes – can you be more specific?
RB: Sure – let’s hit them one at a time. First, the tsunami of data must be managed as efficiently and utilised as effectively as possible. Costs for storing and processing must be optimised, business processes must be agile to quickly assess which data is important, and actions must be triggered based on data while it is still relevant – the clock will be ticking. Next, the platform and its tools must be able to ingest and process free flowing, unformatted data. Finally, in addition to the typical data at rest that we’re accustomed to, an analytics platform must be able to capture and process streaming data and drive appropriate action through the integration of policy and OSS, within both physical and virtual infrastructure environments.
VP: So what are the characteristics of an analytical platform that CSPs should consider?
RB: I would say that first and foremost, an analytical platform serving the needs of today’s highly connected mobile society must operate in real-time – in terms of capturing, processing and responding to the data. The platform also must be horizontal to cut across the typical vertical silos of network, IT and marketing data, and organisational level, and not just the departmental level. It will also need to be open not only to accommodate varying sources of data, but also multiple vendors who understand what data is important and how to interpret it.
VP: How are CSPs responding today?
RB: We work with lots of different CSPs around the globe. Some offer many communications services to both enterprises and consumers, while others focus on a single service to one particular segment, so there is a lot of variation in terms of their needs and responses. In general, CSPs are surveying their existing analytical assets and capabilities, and evaluating what will serve them in the future. As I mentioned earlier, CSPs have been using analytics since the beginning, but these solutions were typically deployed to fulfill a specific purpose in a specific department, resulting in vertical stacks of business intelligence. CSPs understand that to best serve their customers they’ll need to bring the data within those vertical silos together along with new sources of data into a horizontal platform so it can be utilised by the entire organisation efficiently and with as much automation as possible. So we’re starting to see a transition away from analytical solutions that no longer fit the purpose either because they don’t have real-time capabilities, they aren’t horizontally integrated or they involve using older tools and technologies that are more expensive than what’s available today.
VanillaPlus: What are the key use cases that are driving CSPs to enhance their big data and analytics capabilities?
RB: The typical use cases are network planning and optimisation of course, but they are moving way beyond that into using analytics for proactive care and for what we call experience-based marketing, including personalised offer recommendations in real-time.
VP: What do you mean by experience-based marketing for CSPs?
RB: A simple definition is the use of analytics to trigger changes in the network or systems to affect the experience that is in progress or to proactively engage the customer as a result of a previous experience. When realtime analytics are integrated with real-time charging, policy, self-care and a centralised catalogue – this vision of experience based marketing becomes possible – and offers the operator the last remaining opportunity for differentiation – the customer’s experience.
CSPs can set themselves apart if they can capture, manage and use both the data traversing their networks and the systems powering those networks better than their competitors. Add to that a deep customer understanding of what is valued in a communications experience – and create business rules that drive automated action to deliver that value profitably. The heavy lifting is in uncovering what customers truly value, and defining those automated business processes; you can’t get that just by deploying a tool or a platform. This is the type of proprietary intellectual property that will differentiate CSPs. All competitors have access to the same tools, platforms and technologies – they’re only limited by their budget. The long-term sustainable differentiation comes in the form of how they put them to work. We think experience-based marketing is a vision for how to put them to work. In fact, there was a study done by McKinsey in 2012 that found that more than 50% of service providers that employed customer level marketing achieved 10% or more improvement in their EBITDA performance.
VP: What’s the future of big data and analytics?
RB: Do you mean after service providers have realized the vision and benefits of experience based marketing? Well – I’m not sure, since things are moving so fast. As our industry has in the past, this leap in capability will make us innovate the next cycle of capability even faster.
I do think that another area for the future of big data and analytics is the ease of use and accessibility – to the point where an everyday person is accessing an analytical engine to perform a task as they go through their day without even thinking about it. Concepts around visualisation of data and voice querying of data sets will make the insights more accessible to more people, driving even more innovation. Analytics has always been and will always be the lifeblood of communications networks – in the end, the more it is used by more people, the more growth there will be.
