Can actionableinsights becreated from thecomplexity?

Why CSPs’ data and the abilityto analyse it is transforming theirperformance and prospects

ISSN 1745-1736

CLOUDWill CSPs make the mostof the cloud? Read ourVanillaPlus Insight atwww.vanillaplus.com

CEMDoes quality awarenessset CSPs apart?VanillaPlus Insightout July 2014

POLICYDoes it deliver business model flexibility?VanillaPlus Insightout October 2014

BILL & CHARGEWhy CSPs alone cankeep control of billing.VanillaPlus Insightout December 2014

5GWhy it’s here and whatit means for CSPs.VanillaPlus Insightout February 2015

PLUS: Mycom acquires OSI • Vipnet completes NFV trial • Orga Systems and DigitalRoute form MediationZone partnership • Nokia and Juniper to collaborateon telco cloud • Amdocs and Ericsson launch CSP-specific big data platforms and services • Subex delivers hybrid managed services to licence model for revenueand fraud to GO Malta • Syniverse enables LTE roaming for Claro Brazil • Ericsson appoints new business unit heads • Read the latest news at www.vanillaplus.com

June / July 2014Volume 16 Issue 3

Fast, Flexible & In ControlMEET THE AGILE OPERATOR

ericsson.com/realize @EricssonOSSBSS

From serving more customers, to serving more needs, from running

and maintaining, to caring and creating – entering the Networked

Society requires a shift in focus. As the industry moves faster, the key

to success is agility. Operators need to balance customer experience,

efficiency and innovation all at once. This is where we can help.

Working with the world’s leading operators, we know what it takes.

4 EDITOR’S COMMENTGeorge Malim wonders whether there are enough data scientists aliveto serve CSP demand

5 INDUSTRY NEWSMycom acquires OSI fault management; Vipnet completes successfulNFV trial

6 MARKET NEWSOrga Systems and DigitalRoute form mediation partnership; Nokia andJuniper collaborate on telco cloud

7 PRODUCT NEWSAmdocs and Ericsson launch telecoms-specific big data servicesand platforms

9 CONTRACT NEWSGO selects Subex in hybrid managed service to licensing deal; Syniverseenables LTE roaming for Claro Brazil

10 THE HOT LISTThe latest vendor deals listed

11 PEOPLE NEWSEricsson appoints new business unit heads, Willetts joins Sigma board

12 EXPERT OPINIONMatthias Liebe assesses CSPs’ role in monetising the digital world

15 VANILLAPLUS BIG DATA ANALYTICS INSIGHTOur VanillaPlus Big Data Analytics Insight report starts here with 26 pagesexploring how CSPs are moving on from big bang big data plans togenerating real value from more targeted activity

The Insight contains a specially-commissioned report written by Dan Bakerof Technology Research Institute. He examines how CSPs are learning tohandle the complexity of big data analytics and assesses where the sectoris heading next

42 DIARYWhere to go and who to see

44 CLOCKING OFFNick Booth fears we continue to live in interesting times

C O N T E N T S

15

32

CLOCKING OFF!

3

IN THISISSUE

Can actionableinsights becreated from thecomplexity?

BIG DATA RESULTS

BACK OFFICEBIG DATA

36

TALKING HEADSAndy Tiller tells VanillaPlusreal-time contextualawareness is where bigdata analytics reveals itsreal value

44

CONTEXTUALAWARENESS

41

VanillaPlus

NEVERMIND

CONTENTTHE

George Malim,editor, VanillaPlus

C O M M E N T

EDITORGeorge MalimTel: +44 (0) 1225 319 566george@vanillaplus.com

DIGITAL EDITORNathalie BisnarTel: +44 (0) 1732 808690nathalie@vanillaplus.com

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENTDIRECTORCherisse JamesonTel: +44 (0) 1732 807410cherisse@vanillaplus.com

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Mark BridgesTel: +44 (0) 1732 807412mark@vanillaplus.com

OPERATIONS DIRECTORCharlie BisnarTel: +44 (0) 1732 807411charlie@vanillaplus.com

PUBLISHERJeremy CowanTel: +44 (0) 1420 588638jc@vanillaplus.com

DISTRIBUTIONUK Postings LtdTel: +44 (0) 8456 444137

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PUBLISHED BYPrestige Media Ltd.Suite 138,70 Churchill SquareKings Hill, West MallingKent ME19 4YU, UKTel: +44 (0) 1732 807412

DESIGNJason ApplebyArk Design Consultancy LtdTel: +44 (0) 1787 881623

VanillaPlus is distributed free to selected named individuals worldwidewho meet the Publisher's terms of Circulation Control. If you would like toapply for a regular free copy supplied at the Publisher's discretion visitwww.vanillaplus.com If you do not qualify for a free subscription, paidsubscriptions can be obtained. Subscriptions for 6 issues cost £99.00worldwide (or US$150 / EUR125) including post and packing. VanillaPlusmagazine is published 6 times per year.

All rights reserved. No partof this publication may becopied, stored, publishedor in any way reproducedwithout the prior writtenconsent of the Publisher

EDITORIAL ADVISORSDan Baker,ResearchDirector,TechnologyResearchInstitute

AndreasFreund, VPMarketing, OrgaSystems GmbH

Louis Hall, chief executive,CerillionTechnologies

GabrielMatsliach,generalmanager, BSSProduct Line,Comverse

Simon Muderack,senior vicepresident formarketing andalliances,Sigma Systems

David Heaps,senior vicepresident,strategy, CSGInternational

Chris Yeadon,director of ProductMarketing,Ericsson

Dr ReinhardZuba, CMO,Vipnet (TelekomAustria)

© Prestige Media Ltd 2014

Data scientists are theIndiana Joneses of the terabit jungle– shame there’s so few of themI’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-evangelistsaround the turn of the millennium were crackers but there’s a new role which isn’t actuallynew and quite reasonably describes what the job entails – data scientist

data scientist is one whoanalyses data – usually bigdata – to gain insights thatcan then be used to thebenefit of the business. Datascientists are in hot demand

today as CSPs try and harness someexpertise to dig out the hidden gems orvalue moments from their slew of bigdata. However, data scientists are indemand in other verticals as well so thereis a shortage of skilled data scientists forCSPs contend with.

For CSPs the situation is even worsebecause any old data scientist won’t do.They need data scientists thatunderstand the CSP business. There areeven fewer of them and those that existwant CSPs to write them a blank chequefor their trouble.

The wage demands of the handful ofdata scientists that understand telecomsand are willing to work in a CSP’slocation are only part of the problem,though. Their cost can be offset againstthe huge potential benefits a skilled datascientist can deliver. They operate like adatabase Indiana Jones, finding lostinsights and great treasures in CSPs’terabit jungles of unstructured data. Theirkey skill is knowing what question to askof the unstructured data to get the

results a CSP wants.

What can’t be addressed by the value ofdata scientists to CSPs is that theresimply aren’t enough of them. Vendorssuch as Amdocs are starting to offer datascience as a service, pooling datascientist resources and experienceacross multiple customers and also hiringnon-telecoms specific data scientists andpartnering them with a telecoms expert.Think of it as having two explorers on amission to the dark heart of your data.One knows how to read a map, the otherknows how to climb a mountain – bothare critical to the success of the trip.

There’s bound to be additional costinvolved in this type of approach becausetwo heads will always cost more thanone but at least it provides a means toaddress the short supply of telecomsdata scientists that exists.

Telecoms data scientist was a term thatwas markedly absent from my careersguidance counsellor’s list when I was ateenager. The few that have found theirway into that job are truly looking at arewarding decade of employment asCSPs throw resources at mining theirhuge data for nuggets of gold.

Enjoy the magazine.

A

4 VanillaPlus

Vipnet has announced that it is among thefirst European CSPs to successfullycomplete a Network FunctionsVirtualisation (NFV) trial. The second oldestsubsidiary within Telekom Austria Groupcommenced operations in 1999.

Vipnet demonstrated HD video streamingmade possible by combining LTEtechnology and NFV. The demonstrationshowed that in the coming yearscustomers will record and directly streamtheir smartphone content and multimediaonto cloud-based memory storage via avirtualised infrastructure. Thanks to NFV,consumers will no longer need to offloadcontent from their smarthpones to theircomputer. This will make it much moreconvenient and will also achieve better dataloss protection, the CSP predicts.

“We are absolutely confident that the NFVtechnology is a defining trend in the mobileindustry. We are therefore very pleased with

Vipnet's initiative to explore and implementNFV,” said Günther Ottendorfer, the chieftechnology officer of Telekom AustriaGroup, Vipnet’s parent. “The success andefficiency goes along with the 15thanniversary of innovation strategy at Vipnet.For Telekom Austria Group, this is just thebeginning of a journey to explore the latesttechnologies and further improve servicesfor our customers through performance,experience or availability.”

Mladen Pejkovic, the chief executive ofVipnet added: “We are more than pleasedthat Vipnet counts among one of the firstoperators in Europe to showcase theNFV technology.”

I N D U S T R Y N E W S

MYCOM, a provider of carrier-grade serviceand network performance solutions, hasacquired OSI, a fault management andservice impact provider, to extend andenhance its service assurance productportfolio for CSPs. MYCOM is backed byClearlake Capital Group, a privateinvestment firm. Terms of the transactionhave not been disclosed.

The acquisition brings together twobusinesses in adjacent sectors of thetelecoms OSS service assurance market.MYCOM provides end-to-end multi-domainservice and network performancemanagement with its NIMS-PrOptimaplatform, and OSI provides umbrella faultand service impact management with itsNetExpert platform.

“MYCOM Group continues to grow fromstrength to strength, and today we havemade a significant step forward in ourability to provide our customers withadvanced solutions that help them meettheir business objectives rapidly andefficiently,” said Siamak Sarbaz, MYCOMgroup chairman and founder. “Thecombined MYCOM/OSI product portfolio,our continued commitment to significantR&D investment in service assurancesoftware product innovation, and ourenlarged combined customer base acrosswireless and wireline providers will enableus to better serve our customers and meetour growth goals.”

Payam Taaghol, the chief executive ofMYCOM software business, added: “Our

mission is to simplify service assurance sothat the very platforms that our customersimplement to manage their complexnetworks do not add even morecomplexity. We want to deliver pre-integrated, fully automated serviceassurance solutions, rich with telecomsexpertise that correlates services tonetwork resources and unlocks valuablenetwork intelligence.”

Common to both companies’ productstrategies is the management of multi-vendor, multi-technology, multi-domainnetwork equipment elements within aunified system. In addition, bothcompanies’ platforms are highly scalableand flexible, embedding telecom-specificcapabilities and efficient automation.

5VanillaPlus

MYCOM acquires OSI fault managementto extend service assurance portfolio

Vipnet reports successful NFV trial

EXFO has acquired the business of AitoTechnologies through an asset purchasedeal for an undisclosed sum. Aito is aprovider of customer experience analytics formobile network operators based in Espoo,Finland. Aito Technologies offers out-of-the-box customer experience analytics softwarethat unifies business, network, product andcustomer data for real-time analysis,discovery, reaction and decision support for

a wide range of users and decision-makerswithin a wireless operator organisation.

Aito Technologies' analytics software will becombined with EXFO's suite of wirelessinstruments, systems and solutions toprovide heightened, end-to-end visibilityand analytics of 3G and 4G/LTE networks

Aito Technologies' analytics software allows

network engineers to drill down to datagathered from multiple sources, includingend-user and data-plane information frompassive probes like EXFO's dual 10G line-rate capture PowerHawk Pro. In addition,analysed data is cross-correlated withinformation from CRM databases, networkelements and operations support systemsin order to provide MNOs deep visibility intothe end-to-end experience of subscribers.

EXFO acquires Aito Technologies analytics software

Günther Ottendorfer: Confident that NFV is the definingmobile trend

Orga Systems andDigitalRoute haveannounced that they haveformed a partnership.Orga Systems will extendits product portfolio withDigitalRoute’s MediationZoneplatform, offering acombined, scalable active

mediation solution for all tiers ofcommunications service providers (CSPs).

DigitalRoute’s MediationZone platformcomplements Orga Systems’ embeddedonline mediation functionality by supportingthe end customers’ offline mediationneeds. MediationZone bridges the

components in any type of networkarchitecture and provides comprehensivefunctionality which lets systems easilycommunicate with each other. With OrgaSystems’ GOLD Convergent Charging andBilling (GOLD CCB) and embedded policyand charging control, personalisedservices, application-based charging andnext generation services such as shareddata bundles can be launched with a fastertime-to-market and without synchronisingmultiple data flows.

“DigitalRoute’s scalable MediationZone hasproved to be the perfect match for ourflagship product and we are lookingforward to a long-term cooperation with

the company. Orga Systems andDigitalRoute are both uniquely positioned,so we’re excited about the opportunity tooffer our customers a mediation systemthat performs beyond basic tasks,” said Dr.Ralf Guckert, CTO of Orga Systems.

Kari Miettinen, the executive vice presidentfor global alliances at DigitalRoute, added:“We are pleased to announce a partnershipwith Orga Systems that provides CSPswith a new and compelling choice when itcomes to enabling next generationservices. Our joint, end-to-end solution ispositioned to deliver rapid enablement andmonetisation of both present and futurerevenue streams.”

Flash Networks acceleratesuploads for WhatsApp andSnapchat Flash Networks has claimed it is the firstmobile optimisation vendor to accelerateupload speeds for messaging apps such asWhatsApp and Snapchat. Flash Networksuses patented technology to optimise LTEbandwidth utilisation, resulting in up to30% faster upload speeds for an improveduser experience.

Flash Networks’ TCP-4TE offering usesinline high-speed congestion-detectionalgorithms to dynamically adjusttransmission rates based on real-timenetwork conditions to enable faster uploadsof content to messaging services. TCP-4TE

minimises the inherent inefficiencies ofstandard TCP stack, making its datatransmission methods more compatible withhigh-speed LTE networks.

Reverb Networks and Guavuspartner for streaming analytics Reverb Networks, a developer of intelligentSelf Optimising Network (SON) solutionsdesigned to provide mobile networkoperators with improved operational andspectral efficiencies, has announced that ithas partnered with Guavus, a provider ofbig data analytics solutions for operationalintelligence.

The partnership is based on a joint solutionthat combines Reverb’s Radio Access

Network Centralised Self OptimisingNetwork (cSON) solution, which collectsdetailed radio key performance indicatorinformation and makes this data available foranalysis, with Guavus’ Reflex operationalintelligence platform. Guavus givescommunication service providers (CSPs) anend-to-end view across their networkenabling them to dynamically create specificpolicies for video optimisation, bandwidthreservation, and interference reduction on aper subscriber and per sector level.

“Guavus and Reverb have a successfulhistory of working together within large-scalecarrier deployments, including jointlyproviding RAN analysis for a Tier-1 wirelessservice provider on traffic of more than 20million subscribers,” said Zoran Kehler, thechief executive of Reverb.

NEWS IN BRIEF

M A R K E T N E W S

Nokia and Juniper Networks haveannounced an expansion of their long-standing partnership to advance telco cloudfor mobile broadband. The latest collaborationbrings together Nokia’s Liquid Core system,including network functions virtualisation(NFV) and telco cloud management andorchestration, and the Juniper NetworksMetaFabric data centre architecture,including Contrail – Juniper’s networkvirtualisation and cloud network automationsolution based on software-definednetworking (SDN).

Nokia and Juniper’s bundled solution,delivered through carrier-grade services,will provide CSPs with an open ecosystemtelco cloud solution, based on OpenStack,offering automated application deployment,software defined application connectivityand network management. The solutionwill also enable application and networkingelastic scalability with a clear migrationpath for CSPs to use their existing assetsbuilt according to today’s corearchitectures.

“In the same way that cloud computingtransformed the IT industry, telco clouddynamics are radically changing howmobile operators plan to deploy, operateand manage their networks throughvirtualisation and software definednetworking,” said Peter Jarich, the vicepresident of Current Analysis. “Nokia andJuniper’s expanded partnership fits wellinto this evolution, strengthening the telcocloud ecosystem in the process.”

Nokia and Juniper Networks collaborate to advance telco cloud

Orga Systems and DigitalRoute form globalpartnership to deliver MediationZone

6

Dr. Ralf Guckert:Excited byopportunity tooffer advancedmediation systemto customers

VanillaPlus

NetworkMining announcesnew release of networkassurance software

NetworkMining, an independent supplier ofIP and optical network mediation software,has announced the latest version of itsnetwork assurance application. Thisapplication introduced two new features:shared risk groups (SRG) and support ofmulti-NMS operations.

“At NetworkMining we strive to deliverpractical solutions that solve real, operationalproblems at our customers,” said RolandLeners, sales and marketing director,NetworkMining. “The latest release of ournetwork assurance application is proof to

our approach. It has already been adoptedby three of our customers and helps themwith assurance of their multi-vendor andmulti-domain IP and optical networks.”

Ontology Systems launchesIntelligent 360

Ontology Systems has launched Intelligent360 for Network Operators (i360-NetOps), aproduct to help CSPs gain a reliable, fastand holistic view of their network across alllayers, technologies and vendors.

i360-NetOps helps organisations to carryout network troubleshooting, navigate theirinfrastructure and the customers that

depend on it, handle their changemanagement and track the alignment andquality of the data that describes thenetwork and its services.

“Two decades after the network revolution ofthe 1990s, operators continue to strugglewith the consequences of not knowing theirnetwork: excessive third party costs, slowfault resolution, billing errors, poor customerexperience, costly stranded assets andcustomer retention problems,” said LeoZancani, the chief technology officer ofOntology Systems. “With i360-NetOps, theycan gain a 360 degree view of their network,rapidly and affordably know all their services,implemented across all technologies andvendors, in all network layers and how theseservices relate to their customers.”

NEWS IN BRIEF

Ericsson Expert Analytics, a real-time, bigdata analytics platform that enables CSPsto derive actionable insights from big dataand to turn those insights into appropriateactions in real-time, has been announced.

Expert Analytics is a configurable,horizontal platform that the vendor sayscan support a wide variety of use cases formarketing, customer care, operations andnetwork, based on fresh data from networknodes, OSS/BSS, probes, terminals, socialmedia and other sources.

By carefully correlating selected networkevents with probe data and other metrics,

Expert Analytics can identify bothsymptoms and probable causes ofcustomer experience issues for allindividual customers. The platform thenexposes these insights to applications suchas Ericsson Customer ExperienceAssurance, which in turn allows customercare to shorten call durations and improvefirst call resolution, and also enablesservice operations centres to become moreproactive and reduce mean time to repair.

Additional Ericsson and third-partyapplications will support other use cases,such as experience-based marketing,which enriches customer profiles with

recent behaviour and experience data,leading to superior targeting of marketingoffers to individual customers.

Elisabetta Romano, the vice president andhead of OSS and Service Enablement,Business Unit Support Solutions atEricsson, said: “Operators that deployEricsson Expert Analytics gain the powerand flexibility they need to address currentand future agility challenges. Now,operators can delight customers andoptimise operational efficiencies whileraising big data and analytics to a new levelthat generates business value andcustomer intimacy.”

P R O D U C T N E W S

Amdocs has expanded itsbig data analyticscapabilities to offercommunications-specificbig data solutionsencompassing businessand operational supportsystems (B/OSS), networkand social media.

Including new big data applications, anenriched, carrier-grade insight platform anddata science as a service (DSaaS),Amdocs’ portfolio will enable CSPs tobetter harness their data assets andimprove the customer experience.

The announcement builds on AmdocsTeraScale, Amdocs Proactive Care and its

industry focused BI and Data WarehousingServices, as well as exploiting thecompany’s recent network optimisationacquisitions, Actix and Celcite, to extend itsbig data reach into the network.

“A successful big data analyticsimplementation helps service providersmeet the challenges of today’s competitivemarkets. Applying deeper and timelierinsights not only drives out inefficienciesand costs, but also improves customerexperiences to reduce churn,” said Justinvan der Lande, head of Analytics SoftwareStrategies at Analysys Mason. “Vendorswith a deep understanding of the telecomsdomain can better help service providersfind, collate and analyse appropriate data

to generate the relevant insights andactions needed for them.”

Rebecca Prudhomme, vice president forproduct and solutions marketing atAmdocs, added: “Amdocs is the onlycompany in the industry with a contextualunderstanding of BSS, OSS and networkdata, as well as a deep knowledge ofservice provider business processes. Ourexpanded big data analytics capabilities areintegrated into our core customerexperience management solutionsportfolio, enabling service providers todifferentiate their customer experience tonew levels of customer satisfaction whileimproving operational efficiency.”

7VanillaPlus

Amdocs announces CSP big data portfoliowith telecoms specific solutions

Ericsson launches Expert Analytics real-time big data platform

RebeccaPrudhomme:Expanded big dataanalyticscapabilitiesintegrated intoCEM portfolio

from

www.asiainfo.com

C3

Ge re from Big D a!

Veris C3

3

Maxcom selectsNetCracker for quadplay OSS transformation

Syniverse has announced its enablement ofLTE data roaming for Claro Brazil in advanceof the FIFA World Cup, taking place thissummer in host cities across Brazil. Hailedas the biggest single-event sportingcompetition in the world, the World Cup willattract approximately 500,000 soccer fansfrom around the world.

Syniverse will provide a range ofinteroperability solutions that enable ClaroBrazil to deliver high-speed LTE data to itssubscribers while travelling. This agreementalso paves the way for visiting mobile users– like those attending the World Cup – toseamlessly receive high-speed access todata on Claro Brazil’s network, fostering thegrowth of new inbound roaming revenuestreams for the CSP. Claro Brazil was thefirst mobile operator to offer LTE service inBrazil with the 2012 launch of 4GMax.

“LTE roaming enablement is much more

than just a short-term benefit, as it promisesmultiple benefits that Claro Brazil can expectto reap long after the World Cup,” said JohnWick, senior vice president and generalmanager of Mobile Transaction Services, atSyniverse. “Our focus is on ensuring ourcustomers are equipped to deliver theexperiences their subscribers and visitingroamers expect anywhere, anytime.”

Claro is an existing customer of Syniverse’sIPX Network solution, which serves as thenetwork foundation to enable LTE roaming.In addition, Syniverse will provide Claro withits Diameter Signaling Service, which enables4G signaling while simplifying the process bywhich the operator can add bandwidth tothe IPX connection in preparation forperiods of increased usage. Claro also willbenefit from Roaming Data Analysis VisibilityServices, delivering real-time intelligence forLTE roaming traffic to enable fast, high-quality service to its roaming partners.

C O N T R A C T N E W S

Subex has been chosento provide its ROCRevenue Assurance andFraud Managementsolutions in a hybrid modelto GO, a CSP in Malta.The terms of the hybridmodel contract cover aninitial managed services

deployment period after which it will beconverted into a licence model engagement.

Kelvin Camenzuli, the chief technical officerof GO, said: “Protecting revenues across

our telecoms offerings has always been akey focus and that was the decisive factorfor choosing Subex’s ROC FraudManagement and Revenue Assurancesolutions. Subex’s experience in the globalrevenue assurance space is unparalleledand we are confident that this engagementwill enable us to enhance our business in amore effective manner.”

Vinod Kumar, the chief operating officer ofSubex, added: “This is an extremely uniquewin for us. A hybrid model of this naturehas never been tried before in our space.”

9VanillaPlus

GO selects Subex revenue and fraud

Syniverse to enable LTE roaming for Claro Brazil

Maxcom, an integrated, quad-playcommunications service provider servingkey metropolitan markets in Mexico, hasselected NetCracker to deliver a large-scaleOSS transformation to improve its order-to-cash process and network design, buildand optimisation capabilities.

Maxcom provides voice, high-speedinternet, mobile and pay-TV services toresidential and business customers in keyurban areas across Mexico.

The transformation will replace Maxcom’sexisting, third-party OSS solution withNetCracker’s end-to-end, next-generationOSS offerings, including ResourceInventory, Service Inventory, ServiceInformation Management, Service OrderManagement, Service Activation andService Problem Management solutions.

Finecom selects Agamafor TV service qualitymonitoring

Agama Technologies has been chosen byFinecom Telecommunications, the secondlargest cable network in Switzerland, toprovide its DTV Monitoring Solution forcontinuous and real-time TV service qualitymonitoring, assurance and analytics.

Finecom operates the fibre backbone for21 independent cable network operatorsproviding the Quickline multimedia productto end customers in more than 300municipalities.

"We're very pleased to have won this dealand we're excited to be working with yetanother proactive and progressive player inthe cable space," says Mikael Dahlgren, thechief executive of Agama Technologies. "Bycombining our comprehensive solution withour domain expertise and experience,Finecom will have the best support in bothdaily operations and continuous long-termimprovements to efficiently manage andassure the TV service quality and thecustomers' experience."

Vinod Kumar:Hybrid model hasnever been triedbefore

H O T L I S T

Vendor(s) Client Country Product/Service Awarded

Agama Finecom, Switzerland Selected to provide digital TV monitoring system for continuous and real-time service quality monitoring, assurance and analytics 5.14

Amdocs Telkom, South Africa South African CSP awards Amdocs four-year managed services deal to transfer legacy business and operational systems 4.14

Amdocs TIM Brasil, Brazil Deployment of Amdocs Unified Communications to power TIM Brasil’s new blah service 5.14

Amdocs Sprint, USA Extension and expansion of managed services agreement to include Amdocs Convergent Charging 4.14

Comarch Orange, Poland Implementation of field intervention management solution for Orange Polska to reduce the cost of network operations 5.14

CSG International MTN, South Africa Long-term managed services deal to provide end-to-end management of MTN’s wholesale billing and business services platform 6.14

DigitalRoute Vodacom, South Africa Deployment of DigitalRoute MediationZone platform to transform data collection and management component of CSP’s BSS 5.14

Ericsson T-Mobile, USA Long-term managed serves agreement for Ericsson Service Agility portfolio to enable rapid introduction of new services 6.14

Ericsson Vivo, Brazil Ericsson chosen to integrate smart parking and lighting for Vivo’s digital city project 5.14

Jinny Software Ooredoo, Maldives Deployment of VAS consolidation project including SMSC, MMSC, voice mail, missed call notification, USSD and caller ringback tone services 5.14

NetCracker Cincinnati Bell, USA Extension of managed services, data centre hosting and app development agreement to 2020 5.14Technology

NetCracker Vivacom, Belgium Quad play CSP to upgrade to NetCracker real-time, converged BSS platform 5.14Technology

Openmind T-Mobile, Austria Openmind selected to deliver new application to person (A2P) gateway to power A2P messaging 6.14

Orga Systems BeST, Belarus Joint deployment of end-to-end BSS system to create fully convergent environment at mobile operator 6.14

Subex GO, Malta Provision of ROC Revenue Assurance and Fraud Management system in a hybrid managed services model that will convert into a licence model 6.14

TOA Technologies Telefónica, Brazil Telefónica’s Vivo unit deploys TOA Technologies field service management system 5.14

WeDo Technologies Vodacom, South Africa Deployment of WeDo Technologies’ RAID 7.0 revenue assurance system at mobile CSP 5.14

VanillaPlus Hot List: June/July 2014

The Hot List below shows the companies informing us of recent contract wins or product deployments. If your contract is not listed here email the details to us now marked "Hot List" <editorial@vanillaplus.com>

1 0 VanillaPlus

Vivo, Telefónica's Brazilian operating unit,has successfully deployed TOATechnologies' field service managementsolution in just six months.

Vivo now has a sophisticated field servicesolution suite that integrates with its criticalback-end systems, provides completevisibility of its mobile workforce – bothemployees and contractors – and createsan end-to-end customer appointmentprocess. Currently, the tool supports 670field technicians in the data and enterpriseservices divisions at Vivo.

"The deployment of this cloud-based tool tomanage Telefónica's field technicianworkforce shows Telefónica's commitment

to its digital transformation. This is a pioneerproject in the operating support systems(OSS) area, and the focus has been on thequick implementation and achievement ofefficiency goals, "said Enrique Blanco, theglobal CTO of Telefónica, who added:" Infact, the project has been so successful thatTelefónica will be using it as a benchmark forfuture best practices in SaaS deployments."

Markus Remark, senior vice president ofcustomer operations at TOA Technologies,added: "When you think of a company ofVivo's size, you might not expect its firstSaaS deployment to be an application thatis core to its customer-facing businessoperations - and one that works sointimately with its network of key on-

premises systems, including its CRM, BSS,OSS, ERP and resource allocation andplanning tools. But when Telefónica's overallteam made a strategic commitment totransform field service management, scaleand speed were essential – which is whatled them to TOA and its solution suite."

Vivo successfully deploys TOA Technologies' SaaS field service management

Vivo has deployed cloud-based field service management tool

VanillaPlus

P E O P L E N E W S

Ericsson appoints newbusiness unit heads

Ericsson has appointedheads of the recentlyannounced new businessunits, business unit Radioand business unit Cloudand IP. The two units areformed by a split of thevendor’s current businessunit Networks.

Arun Bansal, currentlyHead of Ericsson's regionSouth East Asia &

Oceania, is appointed senior vice presidentand head of business unit Radio. Bansalhas successfully applied his skills intechnology and business across a numberof markets and functions during his closeto 20 years at Ericsson.

Anders Lindblad, currently head ofEricsson's region Middle East, is appointedsenior vice president and head of businessunit Cloud and IP. In his international careerLindblad has held a variety of positions inbusiness development and commercialoperation across countries and regionsduring his 17 years with Ericsson.

Hans Vestberg, the president and chiefexecutive of Ericsson, said: "Both Arun andAnders are strong leaders with experiencefrom large organisations. They have beensuccessful in driving growth in verycompetitive environments. We arecommitted to maintain our leadership inradio technology while also building astrong position in the cloud and IP spaceas the market evolves to 5G. I amconfident they have the right backgroundsand experience to lead the two newbusiness units with their different businesslogics and growth opportunities."

Bansal and Lindblad will remain membersof Ericsson's Global Leadership Team.Successors to them in their current roleswill be announced separately.

Mayrhofer promoted to CFOat Telekom Austria GroupThe Telekom Austria Group announcedat a Supervisory Board meeting thatSiegfried Mayrhofer has been appointed

as the new chief financialofficer (CFO) of theTelekom Austria Group.Mayrhofer will succeedHans Tschuden.

Tschuden has beenoutspoken aboutconcerns regardingAmérica Móvil taking adominant stake in theoperator group.

Mayrhofer has served as CFO of A1Telekom Austria, the group’s domesticbusiness, since July 2009 and, in additionto his new appointment, will maintain hisposition as CFO of the Austrian subsidiary.He started his career at Telekom Austria inMarch 2000 in the International BusinessDevelopment unit. From 2004 onwards heheld several management positions inControlling and Accounting within theTelekom Austria Group.

“I would like to thank the Supervisory Boardfor the trust they have placed in me and I’mthrilled about my new task,” said Mayrhofer.“Over the next year, the CFO of the TelekomAustria Group will be faced with considerablechallenges in setting the strategic course ofthe company, which promises to be atough and compelling task.”

Willetts to join SigmaSystems advisory board

Keith Willetts, thedirector of strategy of TMForum, has joined SigmaSystems' advisory boardas an adviser on thecompany's growthstrategy.

Willetts will work closelywith Sigma's leadership torefine and expand industryawareness of Sigma'sIdea-to-Install strategy for

digital services. His input will help guide thedevelopment of Sigma's award winning asit continues to focus on helping CSPsmaster what's next in the creation, sellingand delivering of advanced digital productsfor their customers.

"To be successful in the digital world,companies must innovate rapidly. They

must be equipped to quickly put new ideasin place, whether those ideas are for newservices or new ways to deliver thoseservices to their customers," said Willetts."In this new environment, automatedproduct lifecycle management, customer-centric sales and ordering systems, and anintegrated and rapid approach to creating,selling and delivering new products are theweapons of choice for companies that arewinning today."

Sigma is an active member of the TMForum, contributing thought leadership inthe evolution of digital businesses. Sigma'schief strategy officer, Catherine Michel, isa longstanding member of the executivecommittee and serves on the steeringcommittee of the TM Forum's Open DigitalProgramme.

Simon Blagden joins MDSas non-executive director MDS, a provider of convergent billing andcustomer management systems hasappointed Simon Blagden MBE, to thecompany with immediate effect.

Blagden has over 20 years’ experience in theUK telecoms and IT industry and since 2004,has been non-executive chairman ofFujitsu Telecommunications Europe andis a member of Fujitsu UK's leadership team.

Blagden previously worked at GECPlessey as international commercialmanager and then country generalmanager. He joined The Quante Group asUK managing director and in 1995, joinedthe main board as international chiefexecutive. With operations in over 50countries worldwide he led the sale of thecompany to 3M in 2000.

“I’m delighted to be joining MDS at such animportant time in its development and I lookforward to making a valuable contributionto MDS, and to working with my newcolleagues on the board,” said Blagden.

Mark Edwards, the chief executive ofMDS, said: "We are extremely pleased tohave Simon Blagden joining our board asnon-executive director, at this very excitingtime for our company. Simon brings awealth of experience in businessrelationships in the ICT sector, which will beinvaluable in supporting our growth strategy".

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Hans Vestberg:Committed to cloudand IP as marketevolves to 5G

SiegfiredMayrhofer:Tough andcompelling task

Keith Willetts: Companies mustinnovate rapidly

VanillaPlus

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The author,Mathias Liebe,

is director of productmarketing at Orga

Systems

Matthias Liebe assesses the likely show stoppers and explores what will be the keycapabilities for CSPs’ profitability in the digital value chain

SPs are faced with the challenges ofoffering innovative products, successfullyselling them and the efficient delivery ofwhat customers have ordered. In the digitalworld, it will become even more vital to befast and agile and to deliver products and

services as expected by more and more demandingconsumers.

We all know from our personal lives that if we shoponline, we expect a seamless and positive shoppingexperience, that the product fulfils our expectationsand that it is delivered to our door step on the next day.

For any company offering products in the digital worldand for CSPs this becomes an important propositionand promise to the customer. At the same time thispresents a great and highly-recognised value to theend user.

Nevertheless, the IT operations and processes for thisremain complex. Telecoms marketing professionalsand CSP product and pricing managers are oftenconfronted with various challenges. We have identifiedseveral show stoppers and key capabilities that – ifmissing – can really harm the service provider’sprofitability.

The first continues to be the lack of integration and theabsence of a common view of customers and theirproducts. The second is the ongoing delay in time to

market for product launches – analysts have foundthat about 25% of CSPs take up to nine months tolaunch new services and another 50% need up to sixmonths. Finally, CSPs’ sheer inability to be morecreative and offer attractive bundles and packageshampers profitability further.

We believe that launching, selling, delivering andmonetising new and innovative products is a keyprocess, that needs tight integration that allowsmaximum flexibility, agility and speed from concept-to-cash.

In addition it is important to recognise that businesssuccess isn’t just based on one good product but alsorelies on the capability to repeat this success over andover again – especially in highly competitive and fastermoving markets.

Operators cannot lose ground and have to maximiseevery revenue opportunity when they: • launch and try to monetise high-speed LTE/4G networks and data services• introduce new products, bundles and tariff concepts – such as switching from voice-centric to data-centric plans, • introduce app-based-charging and multi-SIM products • market and sell their own services • partner with third party content providers • partner with apparently competing OTT players

CSPs’ role in monetisationof the digital world

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Orga Systems has developed its GOLD Catalog andOrder Management system to provide a vitalfoundation to enable CSPs. Along with the ConvergentReal-time Billing (GOLD CCB) system, they canimprove time-to-market for product launches andimprove delivery and monetisation capabilities.

With the new concept of catalogue-driven revenuemanagement commercial offerings are designedwithin the product catalogue and directly drive theconfiguration of charging, policy control and billing.This concept of a single point of product creationimmensely shortens time to market and reducesIT efforts.

In addition the catalogue provides the complete andactual commercial specification – in the form of asingle repository holding the product truth. In additionto order delivery and billing this also drives importantsales supporting capabilities including: salesrecommendations, automatic presentation of productoptions and up-selling or cross-selling opportunities,differentiated product browsing across multiple sales-channels and product eligibility as well ascompatibility checks.

GOLD Catalog and Order Management overcomesthe difficulty of achieving a consistent, channel-agnostic, end-to-end manageability of all customerorders and provides a reliable order managementbackbone stretching across BSS systems and OSSfulfillment silos. It helps CSPs to bridge processbreaks, avoiding manual steps and subsequent errors.It does also ensure early knowledge about potentialjeopardies or order fall-outs.

For CSPs, a good and intelligently designed softwareproduct for catalogue and order management is anultimate time-to-market tool and a powerful efficiencyinstrument. GOLD Catalog and Order Managementhelps CSPs to launch and sell innovative productsmore quickly and deliver and monetise what has been

ordered more effectively and at lower cost, withreduced fallout rates.

For the end consumer the best experience actually isvery simple – it’s when nothing goes wrong. Therefore,it’s of great value for CSPs to provide them with anexperience that is right first time and beyond thatensuring that the buying and delivery experiencematches their expectations.

Last but not least, it remains absolutely crucial fortoday’s customers that the monetisation and billing ofthe products and services bought are correct – and donot cause irritation or worst case even churn. That’swhat we have designed Orga Systems’ GOLD Catalogand Order Management to achieve.

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www.orga-systems.com

VanillaPlus

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TA L K I N G H E A D S

r Andy Tiller is vice president of product marketing at AsiaInfo. Here, he tellsVanillaPlus about one of the most exciting capabilities of big data analytics: itsability to provide real-time contextual awareness. All the unstructured big datathat CSPs generate needs to be non-disruptively turned into structured, actionablecontext-aware intelligence that they can act upon immediately to the benefit of

their customers and partners and, critically, themselves

VanillaPlus: What is real-time contextualawareness, and why are we hearing so muchabout it these days?

Andy Tiller: One thing we’re seeing is that a lot ofCSPs are interested in understanding their customers’contexts better. Context incorporates many differentelements, from static data such as the user’s genderor ARPU to more dynamic data such as location,current balance, and which type of device thecustomer is using. Increasingly, it’s the dynamic datathat CSPs are turning to in order to get a real picture ofthe user’s context.

Big data allows the dynamic data to be extended to amuch greater level of detail, incorporating what acustomer is actually doing on their phone right now. An example would be if a customer is watching avideo on their phone and their data balance is low. Itmight then be a good time to offer them a one-daypass for unlimited video access. That’s a simpleexample where an understanding of the customer’scontext enables the CSP to offer the customersomething highly relevant to their needs – the rightoffer at the right time.

It can be a win-win: the CSP gets to at least make thecustomer happy, and may even be able to charge forsomething they offer that is relevant to the customer’scontext. Much of the drive towards improvedunderstanding of the customer’s context is aboutimproving customer experience. It’s about makingcustomers happy.

VP: How complex is the environment in which acustomer’s true context is constructed?

AT: Amidst all the variables involved the important thingis to understand where you can get the data from inreal-time. In the video scenario I outlined, you need toknow that the customer is actually trying to watch avideo right now. You have to interpret the bits and

bytes on the mobile data network and convert this intoknowledge about what the customer is actually doing.

In addition, you have to access BSS data to see if thecustomer is nearing the end of their data allowance.You might also want to tap the OSS to find out if youhave the network capacity available in that location tosupport the offer of a day pass of unlimited data forvideo consumption.

Only if all three factors match – in other words if thecontext is ideal – is the offer is made.

So there are at least three sources of dynamic datathat need to be provided in real-time to support thatsimple example. We can also see the need for acomplex event processing engine that looks out forthose triggers and creates the appropriate response.This is what contextual analysis is all about.There are, of course, rules that have to be inserted intothe process. The trigger might necessitate anoutbound call from a customer care centre to makethe offer or trigger an SMS with a click-through link toaccept the offer.

Some CSPs already have the technology to do this,but we are at an early stage in understanding how touse these new tools effectively to create goodcustomer experiences.

VP: How is contextual awareness enabled by bigdata analytics?

AT: There is typically masses of data that you need toanalyse in real-time to find the context you are lookingfor, to find the fleeting moment in which to make arelevant, context-aware offer. Static data remains thesame but the user’s location changes and their billbalance alters continually. Even more importantly, whatthe customer is doing on their phone changes all thetime, and that’s where vast amounts of big data mustbe processed.

Real-time contextual awarenessis where big data analyticsreveals its real value

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Our Veris C3 big data appliance processes acopy of those bits and bytes and convertsthem in real-time into structured data. So aset of bits and bytes corresponds to aspecific user on a Samsung Galaxy S3 whois watching a YouTube video, for example.C3 structures the data and watches out fora pre-defined context to arise.

There is a lot of big data technology inthere, including massively parallel and in-memory databases and deep packetinspection technology. All the signaling anduser traffic from the mobile data network isprocessed. That structured data iscombined with BSS data to identify contexttriggers in real time.

The structured data can also be analysedoffline later to identify trends and patterns inhow customers use the mobile network.That’s also useful for identifying customers’interests for market segmentation andcampaigns. Big data technology is at theheart of enabling this and it is only recentlythat we have had the technology and thehorsepower to make this possible. The earlyadopters are experimenting with it to seehow it can change the world.

VP: What technology is required, andwhat are the integration points?

AT: The integration points are the datasources that reveal the context. For themobile data network, optical splitters areused to take a feed of data, non-intrusivelyfrom the network. It’s actually raw datacollected straight from the pipe. A copyof everything is streamed through theC3 system.

We can identify the user’s location bygetting the cell ID from the data networkand we’d have another integration pointwith the BSS. For data sources it’s not adifficult integration job because we’re justtaking a copy of data in non-disruptive way.Getting static data from a BSS is verystraightforward; you just take a daily import,for example.

The voice network is separate, and typicallythe OSS systems will provide the sourcedata. One example of a context triggermight be that a user has experienced threedropped calls in the last hour. The CSP canuse that information to make an apologyand pre-emptively offer some free minutes.To do that you’d want data in real-time fromthe OSS platform.

Dr Andy Tiller: More things arelegal than you would think; thebigger issue is whether they’re

socially acceptable

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VP: What are some example use cases for real-time contextual awareness?

AT: There are three key areas. One is upselling for aCSP that knows the customer context and hassomething relevant to offer at the right time, such asthe video day pass we talked about. Another examplecould be with a CSP that has a music streamingpartner. They can use context-awareness to knowwhen people are listening to music – possibly on adifferent music app – and make an offer to attractthem to their partner’s streaming service. That sort ofupselling is a key application area for real-timecontextual awareness.

A second area would be in help and support. A poorvoice quality experience could lead to an offer of freeminutes; or at the moment when a customer changestheir phone, the CSP could provide relevant apps,services and help for the new device. Knowing theexact moment is important. CSPs talk about‘moments of truth’ when the customer is particularlysusceptible to being dissatisfied or motivated. If youcan delight them at these times you can win theirhearts and minds.

A final area is advertising. This relates to upselling butreally knowing the user’s context means you cantarget advertising better and everyone wins. Theadvertiser gets greater take up, the user only seesrelevant advertising and the CSP is able to chargemore to advertisers.

AT&T’s sponsored data service allows the dataconsumed by users watching advertising videos to bepaid for by the advertiser, but it’s a blunt instrument –it simply removes a barrier to the customer watchingthe ad, but doesn’t provide any incentive. A stepfurther would be for the CSP to incorporate contextawareness in its pitch to the advertiser. The advertisercould then target the ad to relevant customers atappropriate times. It could also provide a reward topeople that watch its advertisements – this time thecontext you need to watch for becomes whether thecustomer actually watched the advertisement to theend. If so, the reward is given.

VP: What are the issues around personal dataprivacy, and how can these be mitigated?

AT: There are two things here: what you’re allowed todo legally and whether it’s socially acceptable in yourmarket. Are you allowed to monitor what a user isdoing, and respond to it? For example, with our VerisC3 product you can even know what people are typinginto search engines on their phones; China Mobile isusing that today to target its own search-based ads‘over-the-OTT’ (CSP over Google over the network),and it works. China Mobile is getting twice as good aresponse as Google from doing so.

You’d think this would be illegal in other countries, butit turns out that it’s legal to do that in Europe as well.More things are legal than you might think, but thebigger issue is whether they’re socially acceptable. Forinstance, if you’re searching for a new car and you geta message from your CSP about a third party serviceto help you sell your old car, you might find thatunsettling or intrusive.

The key thing is to focus on what is sociallyacceptable in your market and how to createexperiences that customers like. To achieve that youneed to understand the customer’s context really well.It’s not just about making sure that the offer is relevantto the customer – you also need to be aware that aparticular campaign might not work well if a customeris asleep or busy. It has to be delivered at the righttime – hence the need for contextual awareness.

VP: What is AsiaInfo’s role here?

AT: Our starting point has been to build thetechnology platform and package it into the Veris C3

product. C3 is a specific big data appliance which tellsyou about how people are using the mobile datanetwork. We can deliver C3 as a standalone solution,or we can build broader capabilities which take datafrom multiple sources (OSS, BSS, the CSP’s website…and others) feed them into a Complex EventProcessing engine which watches for context triggers.Events can take place anywhere and we can track them.

The early adopters in China and worldwide are givingus interesting insights into what works and whatdoesn’t. We’re building up not just the technicalplatform, but also the experience of how to make bigdata analytics deliver real value from context-awareactionable intelligence.www.asiainfo.com

TA L K I N G H E A D S

The key thing is to

focus on what is

socially acceptable in

your market and how

to create experiences

that customers like

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I N T E R V I E W

Vic Bozzo is senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing at Telarix. Here he tellsVanillaPlus that consumer big data projects are not the only means by which CSPs can benefitfrom business intelligence. By sharing data on peering, roaming and bilateral deals amongstthemselves, they can streamline the process of working together and ensure they are gettingthe optimum out of their relationships. Critically, as the value chain diversifies and retailers,OTTs and other third parties become more enmeshed in the CSP value chain, such relationshipswill proliferate and greater insights will be required. Ultimately, success will come fromcreating business-to-business platforms that deliver real business intelligence to companiesacross the market

anillaPlus: How are you seeing thedevelopment of big data analyticsapproaches within the CSP sector? Areyou seeing greater emphasis onbusiness intelligence and the outcomesit can achieve?

Vic Bozzo: We’re certainly seeing our customerslooking to mine their data more. They’re looking for agreater understanding of their business because themargin pressures they are under are such that theyneed to uncover new opportunities. On one side theyneed to do this to protect themselves from arbitrage in

their core markets and create an insurance policy.That insurance is analytics.

From another perspective, we are firm believers thatwho has the most data – and who can do the mostwith it – wins. Big data is making its way into theadvertising world and into the consumer and wirelessmarkets. In more general terms, people are miningtheir data more and more although much of the activityand excitement is focused on the consumer market.

The telecoms industry has been focused on miningdata for many years but there is now a change in

Platforms for sharingbusiness intelligence amongCSPs are the real deal forextracting value from big data

VVic Bozzo:CSPs are looking tounderstand theircustomers’ andsuppliers’ data aswell as their own

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I N T E R V I E W

focus from understanding your own data tounderstanding the data of your customers andsuppliers as well.

That enables negotiation of roaming agreements orbilaterals armed with knowledge. For example, we’reoffering a simulation to enable CSPs to run ‘what if?’scenarios when they’re assessing whether to do adeal. We’re doing that by extracting data directly forthem and giving them interfaces to really analyse theirown data.

VP: That’s quite a significant change in CSPattitude. To what extent is it an improvement onwhat has happened previously?

VB: It’s true that shared data between partners is notalways the first place that CSPs have looked. Theyoften looked to a third party such as Telegeography tounderstand where the market is but they can now usetheir own data to make better buying and sellingdecisions. That’s particularly so in wholesale but alsotrue in the consumer market. For example, I’ve seen aCSP package international calling within its domesticoffering. It has taken off like wildfire because theyknow their demographic. One question we asked washow did they know they were buying or routing in thecorrect way because that’s how the bottom line isaffected?

It’s easy to overlook that when a hot new service istaking off and we expect the market will see this moreand more as OTT bundled services accelerate. CSPswill need to continue to understand what thedownstream effect of such bundling is.

VP: Can you provide some detail on Telarix’SMART Links product and how it relates tocross-corporate intelligence that can be minedto deliver value?

VB: What we’ve been doing for a long time is allowingCSPs to exchange information such as rates and

invoices among themselves. We normalise the formatso data on either side fits into back offices anddownstream systems to give the user a view of whatbuying and selling at.

As we begin to add business intelligence into themodel we get to a point where a CSP can analysetheir data and see not just what’s coming in and goingout but what’s available. That enables a CSP that islooking for a service to be matched with a CSPoffering the service. They can just exchangeinformation without lots of personnel being required.We’re basically saying that, with like-minded systemsCSPs can make matches with each other,automatically generate offers and agree them.

Companies of all types need to get more efficient andmore automated but to do that you need to have thebig data mart sitting behind you.

VP: How do you bring this concept to market?

VB: One thing we’ve done to help is make an ROIcalculator available to our customers and prospectsso they can model the benefits. It is a pretty complexmodel but generally we can demonstrate ROI of about8-10%. Generally there are cost savings and revenueopportunities to be achieved.

VP: How have approaches changed from relyingon third parties to perform analysis to generatingbusiness intelligence from all the data in CSPsystems?

VB: I don’t think people will necessarily move awayfrom using third parties’ data because they will alwaysneed validation. There used to be spot marketexchanges in telecoms that you could go to but thatmodel did not take off. What we’re saying is that ifyou’re a large CSP and you’re getting 500-600 offersand months and sending out 500-600 offers yourself,the data frankly is such that you have your own spotmarket.

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Companies of all types

need to get more

efficient and more

automated but to do

that you need to have

the big data mart

sitting behind you

Third parties will be used to validate decisions.Retailers and OTTs and wireless providers in a lot ofcases don’t have the time or desire to build awholesale organisation but they do want control of thisside of their businesses.

It is practical now to put up a SaaS model or a licencemodel very rapidly and monetise the data very quickly.We’re offering an in-sourced model as opposed to anoutsourced one and that provides the control andvisibility that service providers want.

We certainly see opportunities in cost control but atthe same time, if there’s a niche or a deal to be done,an outsourced approach sometimes doesn’t identify itor bring it through the chain.

We’re providing a lot of managed services now wherewe’ll put our system in the cloud and help youmanage that so, if you do uncover an opportunitythere’s a chance to share the upside. In the past,telecoms expense management companies have notalways shared the upside.

VP: What are the key business intelligencemetrics that CSPs are targeting to extractvalue from?

VB: There’s a lot of peering going on now and lot ofownership of the last mile. If you can get directly tothe last mile and have a last mile to last mileproposition, you can do settling – even if it’s just billand keep. You’re cutting out layers and layers ofincremental cost.

Everybody wants the big data sizzle story which iswhy people are saying look at your subscribers andlook at your web traffic but these are realopportunities.

From a pure B2B perspective this transcendstelecoms. When you look at all forms ofcommunications services, all will be packaged

together at some point so CSPs will need to know theoptimal way to sell those bundles and what theoptimal upside is.

We’re seeing a lot of demand at OTTs and nextgeneration wireless providers and we’re starting to seethese federations blossom as a result.

VP: How is business intelligence being applied toenable CSPs to buy, sell and peer better andmaximise network utilisation?

VB: The crux of this is that CSPs are managing betterbecause they know in advance what they need andwhat price they want to buy at. They also need toassess what’s on offer. The cheapest offer could affecttheir QoS or commitments.

VP: How do you see Telarix’ portfolio developingas business intelligence concepts mature?

VB: Today we’re seeing strong traction in SMS andMMS, for example. Those have traditionally beendifferent environments but that is changing and a lot ofapplication to application (A2A) environments areemerging that ultimately are being merged into telecoms.

There are 3-4,000 carriers that are left out there tobring into the fold so the potential is enormous. Inaddition, we’re seeing new app providers enter themarket every day. Telarix is agnostic to which media,we’ll address anything that can be routed, billed orsettled or bilaterally traded. Right now, our platform iscapable of handling that.

Today, people have a strict mindset of what big data isand that is traditionally focused on the consumermarket and the monetisation of traffic. We see a hugebusiness to business big data play in the telecomsmarket which we focus on. There are so many intra-industry deals being done and the insights we cancollect provide real business intelligence and ultimatelysignificant value to CSPs.

www.telarix.com

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There’s a lot of big data to digest, but you need to make a start or someone

will go OTT and eat your lunch, writes Nick Booth

psychological study of manycommunication service providers (CSPs)might conclude that they’re stressed out byan identity crisis, with the most identifiablesymptom being passive aggression.They’re aggressive towards the subscribers

while being inexplicably passive over the importantissue of content, where they are happy to allowthemselves to act as a conduit for everyone else’s overthe top behaviour.

CSPs need to work out what they want to be, saysDavid Pieterse, HP Vertica’s vice president for EMEA.“They own the data but they still act like a dumb pipebecause they still have the old mindset,” he says,“obviously they’re all different and not all CSPs want tobe content providers. But they should definitely striveto be the experience provider.”

Before they can reach that state, they have to prioritisewhich issues are tying them to their current mindset. Isit the number of silos of data? Or the sheer weight ofdata out there? Or are the outdated business andoperational support system keeping the CSPs as co-dependents in a hopeless relationship? To someextent CSPs need a type of neuro-linguisticprogramme to help them change their habits. Is therea case to be made for simplifying subscriptions andlowering the number of variables?

Pieterse thinks not. The advent of 4G with all thepossibilities for creating data on just about everything,would be the perfect time for a wholesale change, hesays. “Now is the time to plan how they will bedelivering that experience,” says Pieterse. A prioritymight be to identify the ‘keepers’ – the top 10% ofsubscribers that CSPs want to keep engaged with.

it’s the experience that

CSPs need to provide

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�B A C K O F F I C E B I G D ATA

JenniferKyriakakis:

Whatever youmeasure you need

focus

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NEVERMIND

CONTENTTHE

But how do you keep them happy? If CSPs aregenerating billions of meta-data records every month,they should at least start thinking about joining themup and using them properly, argues Bill Dudley, SAPMobile Services’ group director of global productstrategy and solutions.

They can find out how voice calls perform, how fastcalls are set-up and the call quality and the ‘who,what, why, where and when’ of every message that’ssent. But historically they haven’t used this data wisely,says Dudley. “There’s too much of it, it’s too complexand often it only makes sense to a handful of mobileengineers.”

In some cases the valuable data is summarised toprovide various statistics for internal usage but itdoesn’t happen enough, he says.

“The question for CSPs is, can they use this data toachieve a clearer understanding as to what theirsubscribers are doing with their devices? In thesescenarios, we are not interested in what the individualdoes, but what the collective does,” says Dudley.

This is the type of data that can tell the CSP whatapps are the most used by subscribers in somearbitrary location. If they know what apps everyone atWembley stadium is using at 3pm, there are multiplemoney making opportunities. Then the CSP can startthinking of how to persuade subscribers to use serviceA rather than service B.

The mobile operator doesn’t want to create thecontent, but they should be the publisher, says Dudley.“They can publish this data or provide trusted thirdparties access to it for the appropriate fees,” he says.

Before you can manage all the billions of microscopic

transactions, you need to get a clearer overall picture,says David Heaps, senior vice president of corporatestrategy at CSG International. Even if activities aren’tbillable, they are still interesting and there’s a lot of stuffthat’s off the radar. CSG is investing time and moneyinto simplifying the views of data with its Singleviewsystem. “If you have one view of customers andinteractions its going to be a lot easier to start workingout how you’re going to cater for them,” says Heaps.

While the CSPs are simplifying their view on thenetworks it wouldn’t hurt to simplify the packages theyoffer subscribers too, he says.

There does remain the problem of BSS/OSS systemsthat were, for the most part, built for a different world.“BSS was built for the circuit switched world and theycan’t manage the workload of a multi switchedenvironment,” says Jennifer Kyriakakis, chiefmarketing officer and founder of Matrixx Software,“many CSPs can’t get away from the batch mentality.”

One of the most unpredictable variables has proved tobe the users as their behaviour has been changed bythe possibilities presented by smartphones and, ashappened with the internet, nobody really knowswhat’s going to take off. There are endless variablesthat can be tracked, but the key to success isfocusing on an area and doing it really well, saysKyriakakis. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re trackingdollars or minutes or megabytes, whatever youmeasure you need focus,” says Kyriakakis.

Companies like Matrixx Software will provide the linkbetween what the customer wants, the chargingpolicy, the data silos and the systems. But what doesthe customer want? It’s too early to say and theexperience of 3G may not prove an accurate indicatorof how the 4G customer will act.

David Heaps:Even if activitiesaren’t billable, they’restill interesting

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The mobile operator doesn’t want tocreate the content, but they should

be the publisher, says Dudley. “Theycan publish this data or provide

trusted third parties access to it forthe appropriate fees,” he says.

How do CSP’s engage with their subscribers and provide a superior service when they are nolonger locked in and can leave on a whim? The answer is to become a data-driven company todeliver a personalised and relevant customer experience, write Julie Stoughton and Rani Goel

ature markets are seeing massivedisruption to their business. In someregions, age-old business models arebeing completely thrown out the doorand forcing CSPs to reinvent the waythat they interact with customers.

T-Mobile, in the US, removed the typical two-yearcontract allowing subscribers to leave wheneverthey want.

A new data-driven business model – with capability toget insight using next generation advanced analyticstools into massive amounts of big data, bothstructured and unstructured data like customersentiments in real time at the core – is evolving asCSPs reinvent themselves. This approach is proving tobe a powerful competitive advantage as they increasecustomer retention, reduce churn and drive revenuewith new services.

Build customer-centric,data-driven relationshipsIn an overly competitive and saturated market, CSPsare struggling to maintain and grow their customerbase in an industry where the cost of acquiring new

customers often outweighs their short-term value. The most innovative CSPs are realising that the largevolumes of data they collect – information oncustomers, events, location, network usage, exactlocation of the mobile devise and calling experiences –holds the key to their future success. They are quicklyadopting a data-driven business model that helpsthem access this data and derive insights on thebehaviours and preferences of customers, as well ashow they interact with the world.

The harnessing of this data, which is growing withexponential velocity every day, can radically changehow CSPs engage with customers, roll-out newprogrammes, and manage network traffic.

Deeper insights drive greater relevance In the past, CSPs simply collected what seemed atthe time to be overwhelming volumes of data. Andthey stored all this data without taking any action on it,because the technology to analyse and utilise this dataeffectively was slow and prohibitively expensive.

However, sophisticated in-memory database andanalytics technology has changed all that. CSPs can

CSPs can achieve bettercustomer engagementthrough data-driven insights

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Julie Stoughtonis head of

telecommunicationsindustry marketing

at SAP

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now gather, monitor and analyse very large amountsof customer and network data in near real-time, revealhidden insights with predictive modelling andsophisticated data visualisation which provides themwith innovative new opportunities that weren’t possiblebefore. They are now using meaningful data to buildrevenue-generating, highly relevant offers that aredelivered at the right time and in the right place acrossmultiple customer-facing touch points.

For instance, CSPs can now build retentionprogrammes that target very specific micro segmentsbased on customer behaviours and characteristicsusing next-best activity technology. A CSP in Europeused a predictive model based on thousands ofvariables of customer profiling data, such as location-based and preference data, to provide timely offers tosubscribers while they were away on vacation.

A data-driven model:The key to future successRecently, SAP conducted a Perspectives on Big Datafor Telecommunications survey to find out how quicklyCSPs were adopting a data-driven business model. According to the results of the survey, most CSPs arewell aware of the benefits that can come fromintelligently tapping into big data assets. In fact, of theCSPs that participated in the survey:• 71% believe that the ability to manage big data is key to their organisation. • And 60% already have a strategy in place to do so, which underscores the importance of big data as a valued asset.

In spite of the belief in the value of big data, someCSPs are still hesitant. A quarter of surveyrespondents revealed that they are concerned aboutthe ROI for big data investments, and whether theyhave sufficient funding for these types of projects.

A new way to create better customer offersIndustry-wide, many CSPs are already taking

advantage of big data to grow their customer base,slow down customer churn and increase conversionrates. In fact, one CSP has reduced churn by two-thirds and doubled the conversion rates of itsprogrammes with data-driven insights.

For the CSPs that are moving forward with their bigdata strategies, 71% say they believe that they’ll findthe greatest value in real-time offers. To make this areality, they are investing in easy to use and innovativepredictive analytic capabilities that enable creation ofsophisticated models that can be modified quickly forbetter customer segmentation. Data visualisationtechnologies that enable discovery of hidden customerinsights are being used to collaborate and engageinternally and with partners.

It’s time to take advantage of big data For many CSPs, a data-driven business model isquickly becoming a primary business enabler and animportant part of their strategy for future success.Leading service providers are investing in an analyticsplatform that enables them to intuitively explore andpresent data to reveal new insights at-a-glance byproviding agile visualisations and trusted datadiscovery that enables real-time understanding ofdata, both big and small.

In fact, more than half the respondents (64%) in thesurvey are in the production phase of rolling out real-time offers. A similar number (68%) are in the proof-of-concept stage of customer insights and segmentationas they explore the full potential of what a data-drivenmodel can do for their business.

The opportunity is here and nowTo remain competitive, it’s imperative that CSPs rollout innovative, revenue-generating services fasterthan their competitors. Using big data for betterinsights into the customer will lead to more satisfactionand greater loyalty – and a positive impact on thebottom line.

Rani Goel is senior director ofindustry solutionsmarketing atSAP labs

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To learn more about howglobal CSPs are using theirdata to drive greatercustomer centricity, visitwww.sap.com/telecom.

Francois deRepentigny:

Starting small isn’tthe only viable way

but it’s probably theway to maximiseyour chances of

success

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B I G D ATA R E S U LT S

CSPs are starting to realise they don't have to embrace a big bang big data plan that requireshuge investment and long term commitment to wait for results to make themselves apparent.Instead, they can tactically target specific areas and identify projects that can bring results inthe medium term, writes George Malim

ig data was always going to be big andits sheer scale has hampered CSPefforts to extract early value from theconcept. Some are well on the way toachieving the company-wide big data

plan with analytics platforms plugging into thecomplex web of systems and data stores butothers, seeing the sustained and substantialinvestment required are wondering how toconstruct a business case based on vendor re-assurance that benefits will probably come.

Some CSPs are cautious; others can’t see thebusiness case for the investment a big bang big

data plan requires. So is there another, moremanageable way for CSPs to engage in big dataanalytics without swamping their investmentbudget or getting bogged down in long-termproject without being able to measure progressalong the way?

“The short answer is yes, there are easy wins,”says Francois de Repentigny, the vice president ofmarketing at Guavus. “If you allow some time totest things and do a very quick proof of conceptyou can avoid situations in which a customer hasonly a vague idea of what they want to do andultimately what the value is going to be.”

A big bang big data planleaves CSPs strugglingto prove project value

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“Our approach is to do very rapid prototyping for aproof of concept and a vendor should be able topropose that,” he adds. “I’m not saying this will bean ongoing state of affairs as the market maturesbut proof of concept is the way to go to find out ifthe project is worth it or not.”

The early stages have been focused on buildingbig data infrastructure and at least some of thatremains essential to even a targeted project. “Tomove to a more holistic way, CSPs’ big dataorganisations are very focused on infrastructureand putting everything in a big data lake,” saysHadas Haran, the director of product marketingfor big data and analytics at Amdocs. “A lot ofCSPs don’t know where to start. They get anempty box of technology and they don’t knowhow to extract value.”

“Analytics is not new and CSPs are now talkingabout key, specific use cases,” she adds. “The bigbang approach can work for some CSPs but theydo need to overcome a lot of organisationalchallenges. However, it is intimidating for a lot ofCSPs and they will benefit from a more focusedapproach but to do that they need a softwareplatform that enables them to grow for the future.”

Others think a more measured approach issensible at all scales of big data analytics project.“A step by step approach is good for any projectregardless of project size,” says Gordon Rawling,the senior director of marketing at OracleCommunications. “There certainly has been a lotof noise but what’s very different now is thetechnical capability that can be delivered andgenuinely has potential.”

“We’re trying to focus on delivering insight andunless you build in the application of that insightinto the operator and customer affecting process ofthe CSP, you will be forever trying to work this out,”Rawling adds. “For us that relies on all those dataaware capabilities [within OSS/BSS] providinginsights as a matter of course. That’s the way ithas got to go rather than just adding layer uponlayer on top.”

“There are still ongoing, huge big data projects –the behemoths – but we’re trying to sell our VerisC3 big data appliance round the side as something

that plugs in, does the job well and gets quickresults,” says Dr Andy Tiller, the vice president andCTO EMEA of AsiaInfo, who sees a trend towardsmore manageable big data projects. “We’re hopingto ride that trend and offer a quick win with someproof points.”

For Haran, it’s not just about systems andtechnology. An improvement in analysis of the datais also required. With data scientists in short supplyacross the world, that’s something providers likeAmdocs are starting to offer as a service.

“The market is starting to mature and we are seeingdata science being provided as a service,” shesays. “Some generalist data scientists don’t realisethe context of their findings and try to find all sortsof patterns but don’t know how to correlate them.”

“We put a data scientist and a domain expert, suchas a CEM or network operations specialist,together to do discovery sessions and drive theanalytics journey,” she adds.

For Tiller, seeing is believing. “We can show theproduct in use in China,” he adds. “The context isdifferent and some of the product is potentiallyillegal in Europe but CSPs can see the value. Theconcept is also deployed in Telenor and improvingresponsiveness to customers’ contexts issomething CSPs really want to do to differentiatethe experience.”

Others think there has been too much focus onvolume and the early results will come fromincreased velocity. “The basic definition of big dataaddresses the huge volume of data involved andthat plays a lot into the big bang aspect ofprojects,” says de Repentigny. “However, byfocusing more on velocity you can assess what youcould do differently if you had timely access to awide variety of data. Can you prove the value at asmaller scale by focusing on speed and variety?”

“I don’t think starting small is the only viable waybut it’s probably the way to maximise your chancesof success and maximise the opportunity forpositive return on investment by starting small andgrowing progressively,” he adds. “We see it ascrawl, walk, run and that’s the approach wetypically offer to our customers.”

Dr Andy Tiller:CSPs wantsomething thatplugs in, does thejob well and getsquick results

Gordon Rawling:A step by stepapproach is good forany projectregardless of size

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In the rush to be seen as big data players, many IT vendors are contributing to the hype butnot to the solution. So what, exactly, asks Thomas Vasen, is a big data platform, particularlyfor CSPs?

irst big data was born and then, we had allmanner of independent software vendorsclaiming their products were central in thenew domain. As if.

Billing systems? They’ve always been in thebig data business, so we were told. CEM companies?Big data is the central feed so that must make us thedefinitive solutions, they claimed. Analytics providers?Obviously. What, after all, is big data about if notanalysing the haystack to find the needles.

No wonder CSPs were confused when it came to aquestion of where to find solutions to implement theirnascent big data strategies.

Let’s start the search by identifying some simple hometruths about big data:

1. Big data by definition is the information created when actions or events are recorded such as customer business actions and/or network operational events. Therefore, big data is sourced from raw usage and other records that are generated when something is done.

2. These records need to be extracted from their source components – operation or business/network elements or enterprise software – and pre-processed. In raw form and in raw numbers/volumes, the records that make up big data are pretty much useless for handling by any downstream system. They’re certainly big and they’re certainly data, but they’re not what we have to come to call usable big data at this raw stage.

3. Once the transformation above has taken place and the downstream system is reliant on the now usable big data and has been fed with it, big data becomes useful data. Useful data is the next stage

on the journey. A lot of people think useful data, which can drive CEM, analytics, marketing and other end-outcomes and applications, is big data – but it isn’t. It’s what comes next, after big data. The latter solutions could, in fact, be called useful data products, as that is really precisely what they are – products that do something with the input of useful data.

Accept this, and we’re getting to an understanding ofwhat the term big data really encompasses. Big datais the first two steps above. In very basic terms, a bigdata solution is an enterprise scale data processingand re-cycling programme; it has functional aspects ofETL and Mass Data Processing and more. And it is afunction to itself. Furthermore, big data solutions don’tneed a new name or category of software becausethey already have one. It’s called mediation.

Mediation is and always has been – and if efficient andwell designed always will be – the native big data play.Let’s look at why.

First, mediation has data and meets high volume dataprocessing requirements embedded in its DNA. In thecase of DigitalRoute, and for all functional mediationproducts, we could ride the wave of commodityhardware and blade servers that were emerging 15years ago so we could always handle high datavolumes very cost effectively. We’ve always designedour software to do end-to-end in-memory processingso that nothing touches disk while we process it. Wetake whole files in at once to give us a performanceadvantage. We built one of the first truly convergentsystems and can today handle batch and real-timedata in a hybrid way, also a key big data requirement.

One way to understand the impact is to see themediation platform as a data access point andcollection engine for the various downstreamapplications. An example of a use case would be our

Style, substanceand big data

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The author, ThomasVasen, is vice president ofproduct management andmarketing at DigitalRoute

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work with SAP, taking CSP data and selling it asintelligence to advertising firms and marketing agentsstarting with the feed from our MediationZone product.

The idea here is to take raw geo-location and radioaccess network data and feed it, enriched withdemographics information from CRM but anonymisedof personal identifiers into SAP’s HANA databases.The process sees different elements of big datacomponentry at work.

After the big data/mediation solution has done its job,SAP’s analytics solution can analyse the feed formarketing purposes and detect interesting behavioralpatterns. The resulting service – SAP ConsumerInsight 365 – thus unlocks and monetises network-sourced data. So the typical marketing agency whichconsumes the results might, for example, serve theleading department store in Sweden. And that retailermight want to know what kind of people walk by itsstores but never come inside. The intelligence big datacan deliver is of great value because if the store cancross-correlate demographics with location data, itcan market to a target audience much more effectivelythan ever before. But again, the analytics, thoughcritical to using the data, aren’t the big data play inand of itself. That’s mediation.

Particularly in CSPs, mediation is an even better fit asa big data strategic jump-start because long-standingmediation products, as a result of their billingmediation experience, tend to be well versed in thelanguage of the industry. This is important becauseCSPs have very specific data formats and differentaggregation rules, especially when you get into theradio access network world. There, if you don’t knowwhat you’re doing you won’t get far at all becausedata can be tricky to extract and many so-calledsolution providers lack the knowledge or capacity tocollect and process this accurately and efficiently. Forestablished mediation offerings that have a long

standing record of intelligently merging CSP datastreams and turning them into somethingmanageable, this isn’t a problem.

Of course, this isn’t traditional billing mediation – CDRprocessing for BSS applications – which might havedistracted some from grasping how central mediationis in the big data game. But don’t be fooled. For anexample of both its centrality and flexibility, let’s look atdeep packet inspection (DPI). DPI is an important newdata stream mediation commonly works with today. Inour own case, we don‘t capture DPI directly: we takein the records reported by various DPI engines orprobes from companies like Ericsson, NSN, Sandvine,Allot, Tek, Procera, and others. We then cross-reference it to identify what kind of service thecustomer has or which URLs are being served. ThisDPI data is invaluable in measuring customerexperience. For the end user, it’s not just aboutknowing what customers are doing but also looking atdropped sessions and figuring out what the customerdid before and after the drop.

Many mobile operators are not using big datastrategically like this right now because the volumesare so massive, and they haven’t learned how tomanage them. Mediation allows CSPs to be reallyclever about the questions they ask of the data upfront. Most CSPs know exactly what they need to dowith their network data. It’s pretty structured. Thechallenge is to filter it down to a reasonable size so itcan be easily digested and worked with. Thefunctionality needed to do that is already, viamediation, in the data centre.

Let’s conclude with a few realities. Big data has a frontend (its sources) and a back end (its downstreamapplications). In the middle sits the big data engineitself and that’s where the journey is both centred andwhere its success ultimately rests: in mediation, weshould be totally clear about that.

3 9VanillaPlus

www.digitalroute.com

VanillaPlus Video Talking HeadsReach a global audience withyour interview streamed from

www.vanillaplus.com

For more information contact: mark@vanillaplus.comTel: +44 (0) 1732 807410

M O B I L E C O N T E X T

4 1VanillaPlus

Opt-in subscriber data creates value for operators, brands and consumers claimsresearch from consulting firm SEEC

he potential market value for mobile contextdata in China, Japan and Korea is expectedto reach US$11.9 billion annually. In aresearch report commissioned bySyniverse, economic consulting firm SEECestimates the value of these markets. The

report also cites the key drivers of opportunity formobile context as the prevalent use of mobile devicesand social media, increased travel and tourism to theregion, and the growing popularity of mobile banking.

Mobile context is the insight into subscriberinformation, behaviour and location – for those endusers that opt in – that is available to CSPs and thatcan be offered to brands for the purpose of improvingend-user engagement and experience, which canresult in increased brand loyalty and revenue.

“Mobile context enables brands to customiseinteraction with end users and further enrich theirexperiences,” said Mary Clark, the chief marketingofficer of Syniverse. “With China set to become thelargest mobile phone market in revenue this year, andwith Japan and Korea having two of the world’s mostadvanced mobile networks, this region offers a criticalopportunity for mobile innovation. Mobile context hasthe potential to deliver enhanced benefits toconsumers, the companies they trust and theoperators that serve them.”

In the SEEC study, the projected market value isbased on brands and mobile operators that developmobile context offerings for a platform market modelin which brands connect to multiple mobile operatorsthrough a single neutral third party rather than throughnumerous CSPs through separate agreements.Specifically, the market applications of mobile contextthat are considered in the valuation constituteopportunities in mobile banking, travel and retailadvertising. The platform market model wouldgenerate approximately US$11.9 billion in annual

revenue for mobile operators in China, Japan andKorea, assuming a mature market.

When broken down, the potential annual value ofmobile context by country is as follows:• US$5.9 billion for China• US$4.5 billion for Japan• US$1.4 billion for South Korea

An example of the benefits mobile context can deliveris the ability to improve consumer peace of mind formaking payments while traveling, as illustratedthrough Syniverse’s work with MasterCard – inparticular efforts to use mobile context to confirm thelocation of an end user is the same as their paymentcard transaction. In addition, the growing popularity ofmobile banking in China, Japan and Korea meansbrands can build consumer loyalty programmes andissue incentives through mobile devices. As themarket evolves, Syniverse believes mobile operatorswill increasingly develop their mobile paymentsolutions to unlock the value of data traveling throughmobile networks to enhance the end-user experience.

Mobile penetration rates in countries like China, Japanand Korea continue to grow with the transition to 3Gand 4G service. SEEC’s research proposes asustainable long-term market structure with abalanced, mutually beneficial relationship betweenoperators, brands and consumers. Operators stand tobenefit from the sale of opted-in mobile context data;brands can enhance their ability to target and engagewith their audiences; and end-users can gain valuefrom highly personalised, relevant brand engagement.

At Mobile World Congress 2014, Syniverse reportedon the global market value for advanced servicesbased on mobile context insights, a global figureestimated to be worth up to US$44 billion annually,based on another SEEC research reportcommissioned by Syniverse.

Mobile contextdata in China,Japan and Koreaoffers potentialUS$11.9bn opportunity

TMary Clark:Mobile contextenables brands tocustomiseinteraction with endusers

DIARY Upcoming eventsBig Data Worldshow

9-10 September, 2014Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Organiser: Olygenbigdataworldshow.com/malaysia2014

Super Mobility Week9-11 September, 2014Las Vegas, USAOrganiser: CTIAwww.supermobilityweek.com

Telco Big Data Summit USA10 September, 2014Las Vegas, USAOrganiser: Informausa.telcobigdata.com

Telco Big Data Summit12-13 November, 2014Barcelona, SpainOrganiser: Informatelcobigdata.com

Customer Experience Managementin Telecoms European Summit

22-24 September, 2014Vienna, Austria Organiser: IQPCwww.cemintelecomseurope.com

Mobile Video Summit22-24 September, 2014London, UKOrganiser: IQPCwww.mobilevideosummit.com

D I A R Y

DRIVING PROFITS FOR COMMUNICATION SERVICE PROVIDERS

www.vanillaplus.com

VanillaPlusWebsite

The Telecom Analytics & Big Data Market, is a detailed, 574 page report that looks at the market from many angles and profiles41 key vendors offering solutions. The report draws from five dozen interviews TRI held with key vendor and carriers experts.Please scan the lengthy table of contents, summary and ordering details at the web URL below:http://technology-research.com/products/bigdata.php

Published: March 2014 w/updates added

Price: $4,990

In-Depth Profiles: 41 solution vendors

Formats: MS Word/Excel/HTML w/full search

Payment/Delivery: Immediate delivery w/ your creditcard order or Net 30 Day check

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What Report Buyers are Saying:

“The report is well written and very comprehensive. We not only use it in marketing, but havedistributed the HTML version to our sales team.”Amit Daniel, Executive Vice President of Marketing & Business Development, cVidya

“As an analytics solution vendor, we value industry analysts who can take our complex valueproposition and explain it in the context of telecom-specific pain points. TRI does this verywell. And the bonus of TRI’s Report is we get insights on how the competitive landscapeperceives the market.” Jonjie Sena, VP, Market Strategy, TEOCO Corporation

“Since our expertise is in the filtering and enhanced of deep-network big data, TRI’s report isproving a valuable resource for learning the business models of the analytics solution vendorswe seek to partner with.” Thomas Vasen, VP Product Management & Marketing, DigitalRoute

Technology Research Institute (TRI) -- BSS/OSS research since 1994Dan Baker, Research Director -- dbaker@technology-research.com -- Tel: 1-570-620-2320

The Telecom Analytics &Big Data Solutions Market

FINALLY. . . AN IN-DEPTH ANALYST REPORT ON:

4 8 VanillaPlus

ome of the biggest runaway successes inlife are the simplest. The text message. Websites featuring kittens that look like AdolfHitler. Advertising campaigns based on thewords Hello and Boys.

On the other hand, there are some ingenious inventionsthat, in spite of massive expectations, failed miserably.One of the species that died out before man came onthe scene was a mutation of the crocodile family(crocodylinae) that had evolved the ability to climbtrees and hunt by ambush. By all accounts, they wereboth intelligent and indestructible. How on earth didthey fail? Nobody knows, but they did.

One of the explanations for the success of the airportnovellist Jeffrey Archer was that his uncomplicatedapproach took him right to the heart of the matter inhand. Whereas his more intelligent peers might havehad to wrestle with a tangle of competing ideas andemotions, Archer’s thought processes was a lot lesscomplicated. Which made it easier for others tounderstand and a lot easier to execute.

Given the pace of change in this industry, with somany different dynamics, it’s difficult not to concludewe have been subjected to the ancient Chinesecurse: May you live in interesting times.

Everything is in a state of constant flux: the handsets,the broadcasting techniques, the infrastructure, thedatabases. The infinite possibilities that are beingcreated are having a destabilising effect on the mostvariable entities of all, the end users. Who knows howthey’ll behave once LTE is fully installed. The pace ofchange seems to be spiraling ever faster.Smartphones changed the way users behave. Thebehaviour of users has changed the way CSPs wantto connect with them. The new IP networks willstimulate new rounds of invention among the handsetmakers, whose only method of competing seems tobe to make handsets ever more complex.

Have you ever attended a product launch and beentempted to shout, “Stop right there! This is toomuch innovation.”

You have to feel sorry for anyone involved in creatingbusiness support systems to underpin all this activity.According to Jennifer Kyriakakis, a founder of MatrixxSoftware – which sets out to rationalise what userswant to do with how CSPs want to charge them – asingle film viewing can launch a thousand sessions.It’s known as ‘doing a Cleopatra’.

The challenge for the CSPs is to somehow rationaliseall the thousands of variables involved – the types ofsubscriber, device, location, bandwidth, payment,credits, content being consumed, services being used– and calculate their inter-relationships and modify theway service is delivered, millisecond by millisecond.Whoever sets the unachievable deadline for deliveryhas, by a cruel irony, decided to call it ‘real-time’.

Who could blame the engineers and developers, whohave to meet this impossible brief, if they exclaimed!‘real-time? They’re having a laugh aren’t they?’

One of the primary principles of engineering is thatthe more moving parts you have in your system, themore likely it is to fail. Would it be a good idea to fixsome of the variables? Surely it would be better todevise packages for types of users, based on theirpredicted types of consumption? By now, most of usknow what types of consumer we are and whetherwe’re more likely to spend our train journey catchingup on TV shows, joining a twitter storm aboutNetwork rail or texting our friends to explain whywe’re going to be late.

All it needs to execute the plan is for the people whosell us our phones be they online or on the high streetto listen to us. But that’s not my experience of thesalesmen in my local Orange or Vodafone or 3 shops.Usually they don’t care what you want. They push youdown one track. They’re almost Archer-like in theirsingle mindedness.

Which is a shame because if they gave more thoughtto the initial design of the package, when thecustomer’s relationship with the CSP was first beingcreated, everything could be a lot simpler to executeand understand.

Oh dear – That really istoo much innovation

C L O C K I N G O F F !

The author,Nick Booth,

is a contributor toVanillaPlus and a

technology journalist

SAs the Chinese saying goes, we live in interesting times – and that’s swearing, writes Nick Booth

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