I’ve heard some weird and wonderful job titles in 15 years of telecoms journalism.
Ambassador of Strategy, Global Thought Leader and a spate of something-evangelists around the turn of the millennium were crackers but there’s a new role which isn’t actually new and quite reasonably describes what the job entails – data scientist.
A data scientist is one who analyses data – usually big data – to gain insights that can then be used to the benefit of the business. Data scientists are in hot demand today as CSPs try and harness some expertise to dig out the hidden gems or value moments from their slew of big data. However, data scientists are in demand in other verticals as well so there is a shortage of skilled data scientists for CSPs contend with.
For CSPs the situation is even worse because any old data scientist won’t do. They need data scientists that understand the CSP business. There are even fewer of them and those that exist want CSPs to write them a blank cheque for their trouble.
The wage demands of the handful of data scientists that understand telecoms and are willing to work in a CSP’s location are only part of the problem, though. Their cost can be offset against the huge potential benefits a skilled data scientist can deliver. They operate like a database Indiana Jones, finding lost insights and great treasures in CSPs’ terabit jungles of unstructured data. Their key skill is knowing what question to ask of the unstructured data to get the results a CSP wants.
What can’t be addressed by the value of data scientists to CSPs is that there simply aren’t enough of them. Vendors such as Amdocs are starting to offer data science as a service, pooling data scientist resources and experience across multiple customers and also hiring non-telecoms specific data scientists and partnering them with a telecoms expert. Think of it as having two explorers on a mission to the dark heart of your data. One knows how to read a map, the other knows how to climb a mountain – both are critical to the success of the trip.
There’s bound to be additional cost involved in this type of approach because two heads will always cost more than one but at least it provides a means to address the short supply of telecoms data scientists that exists.
Telecoms data scientist was a term that was markedly absent from my careers guidance counsellor’s list when I was a teenager. The few that have found their way into that job are truly looking at a rewarding decade of employment as CSPs throw resources at mining their huge data for nuggets of gold.
