Big data and analytics continues to be an area of high interest for the industry, and the news coming out of Mobile World Congress reflects how vendors and operators hope to leverage BDA for their businesses in the coming year. In particular, three areas are trending: analytics in security, in monetization and in the connected vehicle space.
SAP launched its new Big Data Margin Assurance offering, which leverages SAP HANA and a standardized data model based on collaboration with TM Forum to help operators utilize their customer data and get better visibility into customer margin – even perhaps shifting from an average revenue per user perspective to an average margin per user metric. The margin assurance solution follows on SAP’s pre-MWC announcement that DigitalRoute has extended its reseller agreement with SAP to include its Big Data Integrator offering for real-time melding of network and operating support system data.
SAP has also been focused on monetization opportunities for the connected car that leverage large volumes of information, with its SAP Vehicles Network and a new collaboration on vehicle-centric transactions with automaker SEAT and Samsung. According to Gil Perez, SVP of “Internet of Things” and GM for SAP’s connected car business, the company has been working on this offering for a number of years and it utilizes HANA to provide information on a number of use cases: connected parking, connected fueling and quick service restaurant information. SAP has been building a massive database of on-street and off-street private parking options and has tied in Samsung Pay to enable drivers to make transactions.
“We’re a business-focused company, so we’re focused on the business transactions,” Perez said – not so much about locating parking or fuel, he added, which has been an area of interest for other mobile efforts, but in enabling a mobile business payment process that is vehicle-centric and has multiple use cases.
Telematics also continues to be an area of ongoing development leveraging wireless infrastructure to collect information. LG and Intel said this week they are working on “5G”-ready telematics solutions for vehicles. Cognizant, meanwhile, said it will be working with Hertz Equipment Rental on a new IoT strategy for its heavy machinery rental operations to integrate wirelessly captured data about maintenance, operator behavior, performance-related data and geolocation information.
On the security front, Argyle Data launched a threat analysis product focused on fraud detection – one of the easiest return on investment cases to make, according to Vikash Varma, CEO of Argyle Data. Varma said although most carriers now have a big data strategy, they often still struggle with ROI justifications in implementing their strategies.
“Using fraud as the first use case, it’s easy for the carrier to put a value to it,” Varma said. “It’s very compelling.”
Argyle partnered with Cloudera on a joint technology platform and has been demonstrating its “revenue threat analytics” at MWC this week, while also announcing expansions of its footprint: partnerships in Europe, Africa, Latin America and India, to boost its availability to mobile operators around the world.
Verizon Communications and Splunk announced a partnership offering threat detection for the enterprise, illustrating the potential of the trend for security-as-a-service that operators can monetize. The partnership will see Verizon integrate Splunk’s analytics into its managed security offering, with an eye toward IoT applications and overall network security.
On another note, this week also saw consolidation within the enterprise big data analytics and IT market, with Oracle managed service provider Data Intensity snapping up competitors Enrich in North America and Inatech’s Oracle business. SAP also announced its purchase of Roambi, which focuses on mobile analytics and mobile business intelligence; financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. It’s also worth noting IBM made a major analytics acquisition just before MWC, announcing it will acquire health-focused analytics company Truven Health for $2.6 billion.
