Editor’s Note: With 2013 now upon us, RCR Wireless News has gathered predictions from leading industry analysts and executives on what they expect to see in the new year.
Big data has been among the hottest topics throughout 2012 across virtually all industries and communications is no exception. Business leaders and IT management are inundated with proclamations, suggestions and estimates of the market growth of big data, despite the immaturity of markets, technology and even a consensus understanding of the topic. Accompanying the barrage of superlatives are also corresponding gloom and doom scenarios of organizations overwhelmed by the ever increasing torrent of big data, or the predicted failure of any organization that might ignore the opportunity that big data presents. In our estimate, big data is probably somewhere near the “peak of inflated expectations” in Gartner’s hype cycle. Having said that, big data is certainly among the most important forward looking topics for business and IT organizations in service providers today, and it will remain among the top issues/initiatives for the foreseeable future, including of course 2013.
Part of the confusion stems from the lack of definition of big data. This has been a topic of research at TM Forum for some time, and when we asked a group of senior communications executives their definition earlier this year, we got more than a dozen different responses; a few of them very strategic in nature, many of them technologically-oriented, and some skeptical as to whether big data was “really new.”
The skeptics cited the long standing adoption of data management and business intelligence concepts and tools in the industry, and noted that service providers have always dealt with large amounts of network, service and customer data. For many of them, big data is just a new term for BI. The technologists cited new tools and technologies, and the emergence of open source tool kits.
The strategists cited the emergence of information-fueled best practices for organizational decision making and the increasing tendency for management to “trust the numbers.” All of these viewpoints can be argued effectively, but none give a complete picture of the subject- contributing to the confusion that will surely be with us for some time,
While definitions of big data are all over the map, all of these parties accepted that there is change happening as characterized by the four “Vs.” These include:
Volume: It’s should be no surprise that data volume is the primary attribute of big data. While the skeptics are correct about history, the difference now is that the increase of smart devices both in the network (e.g. probes) and attached to the network (e.g. smartphones, tablets, machine-to-machine meters and appliances) and the associated traffic is exploding. Social media is also contributing here.
Variety: An emerging aspect of big data is variety, both in source and in format. Among the newer types come from the Web (social media, web logs, click streams, etc.). It also includes various unstructured and semi-structured (e.g. XML) media types including voice, text, data, video and image from both internal (e.g. contact centers) and external sources.
Velocity: This eludes to the speed and/or frequency of collection and processing of relevant data. Customer retention, quality of experience, upselling/next best action, parental controls, fraud management and mobile advertising are a few of the areas that can benefit from the agility of SPs to handle increased data velocity.
Veracity: The larger multi-service operators we spoke with expressed a good deal of concern about the state of their data and the complexity of data integration, especially when sources of data to be integrated are not properly “scrubbed” or synchronized from a timing perspective.
A more useful way for service providers to think about big data, at least from a business perspective, is through a fifth “v”, namely “value.” Examples of value include increasing operational efficiencies, improving customer relations, driving marketing effectiveness, and increasing product /service innovation and velocity. This fifth “v” is what should matter to service providers and other businesses, not just the wow factor of the previous four “Vs.”
So with this in mind, here are our expectations for advancements in 2013 for big data in the communications industry:
1. More focus on organizational decision making. Service providers increasingly understand the value of data as a tool to improve results in marketing campaigns, customer satisfaction, and quality of experience, network performance, brand management and a plethora of other topics. A number of service providers are studying or experimenting with decision engineering, and other decision management techniques, though more typically at the departmental level than company-wide. Look for these practices to become more formalized and expand cross functionally as the pioneer departments demonstrate success.
2. Technological evolution. Expect to see lots of activity in this space. Despite all the hype, very few service providers have open source (Hadoop/MapReduce, et al) big data environments in full production mode. But lots of operators experimented with this technology in 2012, and in the 2013, we will begin to see broader production use of these tool kits. Having said that, many service providers will be implementing what we might call “late stage traditional” technology, such as in- memory processing, column-based databases, analytical appliances, in-database calculations and more efficient loading techniques. We expect to see more focus on data compression and de-duplication technologies as well. While some pundits see emerging technologies as taking over traditional BI environments, we believe the level of investment service providers have in existing traditional technology and skills, combined with the newer capabilities discussed above will keep them relevant for the foreseeable future.
3. A battle for big data talent. As companies in all industries put more faith in big data and BI technology in general, competition for talent will begin to peak. Good analysts and data management staff are hard to come by. Analysts must acquire and master a broad variety of skills, including quantitative/technical skills, business knowledge and process design skills, relationship building and consulting skills and coaching skills to help others. Analysts by their very nature are also highly motivated by challenging and interesting work, allowing them to hone their skills and gain a sense of personal progress. Service providers will find it challenging to compete for this talent, and will need to find ways to source the best talent, as well as create appropriate training and growth opportunities for analysts if they want to keep them as employees.
4. Applications lead the way. As hot as the underlying technologies are, given the skill shortages and the pressing need for business results, the fastest way for many service providers to realize the benefits of big data will be through the implementation of applications using the newer technologies. We are already seeing applications emerging that take advantage of the new techniques and technology, spanning domains such as customer experience, social media analysis, mobile advertising, service management and network management to name a few. In addition, some vendors are embedding big data technology, including open source, in planned releases of existing application suites in the coming year.
2013 will be an important year for big data across the communications industry and the digital world in general. We believe that proper selection, deployment and use of these capabilities in decision making processes has the potential to create significant advantage for service providers both in traditional service markets, and also in new market roles as enablers of the digital value chain, and we’ll be following big data closely in the upcoming year.
