Barry Lerner, Huawei’s regional CIO for South Pacific solutions marketing, says avoiding being deluged in a data storm of useless information requires clearly defining the expected business outcomes
Cloud Supplement: How should service providers undertake big data?
Barry Lerner: As service providers start to explore the insights, efficiencies, value and competitive edge that big data can bring to their companies, they must first decide how to embark on such a journey. Big data must be business driven with well-defined expected outcomes. Each department or organization needs to define its own individual big data requirements.
Big data must not be undertaken as a technology initiative, nor driven by the IT department. Each department will need to clearly define their requirements, such as improving customer loyalty, streamlining processes, improving revenue, network optimization or top-line growth through predictive analytics, etc. These requirements need to be clearly defined and agreed upon before any project spending begins.
How do service providers identify what data they need to capture and keep?
The biggest big data challenge I see for service providers today is to identify the correct and most useful data sources to tap, and then to understand where to find the value in that data. You need to start with the basic questions that pertain to your department’s mission and KPIs.
If you go and capture everything, you will soon find yourself deluged in a data storm up to your neck in useless information. Typical questions will be: “How are customers and potential customers using technology?” “What are they not doing with technology, or what technology are they avoiding?” “Are my customers happy If not, why?” “What will my customers be doing six months or a year from now?” And, of course, “What do I do to meet my customers’ needs?”
The internal side of a service provider (OSS function), can use analytics to address questions such as:
- Where network failures occur
- Where they have to improve response time or uptime
- Where shifts in customer behavior, drawn from the customer-facing analysis, will impact the network or call for network expansion
- How concepts such as virtualization can allow the operations team to respond to shifts in customer activity, even things like time of day variances.